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Ask HN: What is the best monitor for people with failing eyesight?
My father's eyesight is failing but he would like to continue using the Internet.
When displaying text with a very large font on his current monitor the letters become fuzzy around the edges and the very little text is displayed. He must scroll horizontally and vertically which causes him to lose his place while reading.
Any suggestions would be helpful.
- Jaruzel 10y agoMy 2p's worth: Think about a screen that can be mounted vertically, as most websites are now designed for phone orientation. Also use a browser where the user-agent string can be switched to mimic Android or iPhone - this will trick websites into showing mobile friendly version of pages which will typically have larger text sizes by default. If he's a Facebook user, then https://touch.facebook.com https://touch.facebook.com has larger text sizes and less on-screen clutter, can be easily zoomed, and works on desktop browsers.
- jacquesm 10y ago> Think about a screen that can be mounted vertically, as most websites are now designed for phone orientation. That's a good tip. On some monitors even if they can be mounted vertically they no longer work well because of a polarization filter embedded in the monitor glass to reduce glare from overhead lighting. So you'd need to make sure this isn't the case. (It's fairly easy to see if you rotate the screen 90 degrees clockwise or counterclockwise there are all kinds of visual artifacts.)
- jacquesm 10y agohey Steve, Use a very large screen and put it further away (TV sized). That should help, I use the same trick (I'm at +3 now, in only a very few years from not wearing glasses at all). You can go to a TV store with your dad and a laptop, plug it in and see if it works for him without shelling out $. 32" or even 40" at 1920x1080 at 4' or 6' would be good options to try. Philips has some cheap 4K screens that may be worth trying as well. Best of luck!
- camhenlin 10y agoAdding to this, a large 40+ inch 4k television run in hiDPI mode on a Mac still looks very, very crisp (no blurriness around edges of text or anything) while displaying huge text and UI elements. This is probably one of the best bets for readability for those with poor vision
- usermac 10y agoA Mac, a trackpad and 2-finger zoom using the CTRL key modifier.
- LarryMade2 10y agoI got 2 4:3 19" monitors side by side, gives me an effective resolution of 2560 x 1024 - vertical rez might not be as great but isn't gawd awful small either.