
Ask HN: What is the best monitor for people with failing eyesight? - stevewilhelm
My father&#x27;s eyesight is failing but he would like to continue using the Internet.<p>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.<p>Any suggestions would be helpful.
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Jaruzel
My 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.

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jacquesm
> 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.)

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jacquesm
hey 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
Adding 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

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LarryMade2
I 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.

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usermac
A Mac, a trackpad and 2-finger zoom using the CTRL key modifier.

