Some Ways In Which My Shitty Eyesight Impacts My Life
2017 07 06
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The usual practice is to have a computer monitor set back from the edge of the desk some - either with blank space in front or a keyboard. This does not work for me with my vision. I need to keep the average monitor right at the edge of the desk. My face has to be within eight or so inches of the screen, or I can't read it properly. At that distance I am using an 18 point font in my text editor.
Because I need the monitor at the edge of the desk to see it, it means I can't use a desk without a keyboard tray, because there generally isn't enough room to put the tray on the desk between me and the monitor - although sometimes this is possible with a bit of balancing. If I do use a desk with a keyboard tray, it has to be one where the try stays in, and has enough room for my hands to go under the desk's top so I can use the keyboard with the tray in. I can't leave the monitor on the desk's top, and pull the keyboard tray out as most folks would use it, because then I'm too far away from the screen. There are not, let me tell you, enough desks on this planet with a keyboard tray lowered enough so I can fit my hands under there.
You're going to ask me why I don't just enlarge things on the screen. I'll tell you why: because that messes up the use of the screen. It makes it harder to navigate around when there's a lot of stuff open. It also means I can't have my eye on a whole window at once - I'd have to move it around to see all the things I need on it. That is an enormous pain in the ass.
You're going to ask me why I don't use a bigger screen and sit further back in a normal-ish fashion: because my vision issue isn't just about size, it's also about distance. I had a 50 inch flat planel TV as a monitor at one employer's, and I still had to sit within a foot of it.
I'm trying to remember my numbers. This is WITH correction, so with my glasses on:
left eye: 0/200 with 5 degrees
right eye: 80/200 with 40 degrees
That's what was on the medical form sent to the government.
I can read with my left eye, but only if I put my face right against the screen with the font size I'm using now; and even then it's not the most clear. for all intents and purposes, I have just the one working eye - only the one eye I "use", or read out of.
The distance issue is specifically why I don't use a laptop, and never will. I'd have to be hunched over all the time to try and read the screen. My vision is also why, when out in public, I will not look up when someone honks a horn at me or yells my name from a distance. I can't see people's faces from a distance, nor what they're doing, so if you're waving at me from a car on the road, I won't know it's you. So, I just don't look up. It's better than having people assume I'm being rude by looking at them - or so they think - and not waving back, when I can't tell they're waving. If you're more than five feet away from me in a public space and want my attention, yell my name and give me a direction - or, don't yell my name. I have had people accuse me of being rude because they've walked by me and waved and they think I've ignored them. So, really, the best thing to do is just get in my face, within two feet of me should be good.
The distance issue is also - in part - why I avoid any film or TV show that relies heavily on subtitles. At a distance, I can't read them at all; up close, I can either watch the pictures or read the text. I can't do both at the same time.
Oddly, it wasn't until well into my adulthood that I realised I had no depth perception. I've learned to compensate for that so well that I never realised how bad it was. When I was a baby, and we were still living in Glace Bay, we had a tile floor in the kitchen - green and red squares. I wouldn't walk across it, but would slide my foot from square to square, because I couldn't tell they were at the same level. This was after the surgery but before glasses. Whatever issues were caused by the lack of depth perception all those years, I mis-assumed they were related to not being able to see at a distance. I still catch a ball like a small child - either with my hands up warding it off, or arms stretched out to hug-catch it with my face turned away. It does mean, though, that I can't watch 3D movies, or sometimes navigate a staircase without sliding my foot along the floor until I find the edge.
It makes creating art, choosing food at a buffet, and playing with swords interesting, that's for sure.