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Tag: risk

RISK THROUGH A NEW LENS – why do smart people do dumb things?

“They (smart people) are no more or less likely to suffer the debilitating effects of carrying on regardless of the work/life balance, suffering presenteeism, effectively self-harming, and, at risk of self-medicating their way through the 21st Century with an addiction to display screen devices.

Too often they spend longer on-screen than asleep, and then wonder why they constantly feel fatigued……….“ Nigel Dupree 2022

Smart people are damaging their well-being via their screens.

Your digital display screen should be classified as a hazard, as long-term use causes dry eyes, blurred or double vision, headaches and fatigue, and many other symptoms and knock-on effects.

But you know this.

Yet…If you know this and are carrying on regardless, the question is, why?

Why are you, as a smart person behaving in a dumb way?

Risk assessment is a term used to describe the overall process or method where you:

  • Identify hazards and risk factors that have the potential to cause harm (hazard identification).
  • Analyse and evaluate the risk associated with that hazard (risk analysis and risk evaluation).
  • Determine appropriate ways to eliminate the hazard, or control the risk when the hazard cannot be eliminated (risk control).

Have you seriously risk assessed your screen? If not, why not?

You know in the back of your mind that doom scrolling is not good for you, you know when you need to step away from the screen as you start to feel tired, your eyes are sore etc, but do you?

We can risk a guess here and state probably not.

And one possible reason for not doing so is bias.

You could be suffering from bias regarding this issue, and it’s probably not your fault, and you’re not even aware of it.

Plus, you’ll be fighting the team of behavioural experts employed by social media giants to keep you on screen and scrolling, and they know all about bias – it’s their job.

A group or troupe of bias?

We all have a degree of confirmation bias – wanting others to approve of our choices.

Then we’ll have a smidgen of Groupthink – aligning with others.  Maybe a dash of anchoring bias where we are informed by things we see (advertising and everyone is always on their phone).

Status quo? Sure, keeping things as they are and not wanting to rock the boat, especially at work.

Then finally, Hindsight – we all can attest to that and realise things could have been different.

We want to prevent you from looking back thinking, well, I knew it was not good for me, I did know better, but I didn’t do anything.  

Going the wrong way
Don’t go the wrong way

Can we rely upon others to assess risk for us?

Yes, up to a point. We all depend upon HSE to ensure our work areas are safe, and we hope they are aware of their biases when assessing.

Yet still…

Occupational Health and well-being hazards and “predictable risks” are expediently omitted or worse, ignored. 

Why?

Is it Stress? Maybe. Lack of money, time, resources? Maybe. Or simply they don’t know? (Spoiler – they do but they are not implementing what they know.)

This leads us to the minefield of self-assessment.

Because if those paid and responsible for assessing risk are not implementing the regulations that will mitigate harm, we must do it ourselves to reduce our risk.

But this is where our bias is even worse, as we all love to think things are either way better or way worse than we imagined.

We need to self-assess our risks, and so it’s wiser to use an objective tool or tools as we can.

Let’s talk about assessing the risks regarding your digital display screen.

You need to assess them, and you also need to evaluate them for accessibility, whoever you are. Accessibility is not just for those we perceive as disabled; it’s for everyone.

Reading/working on a digital display screen is not optimal for humans. Recent research shows that it impairs your comprehension and alters your breathing – as reading on screen is more energy-intensive than reading on paper.

“The convenience of smartphones and other electronic devices is immeasurable, and I believe that much of what we do cannot be replaced by paper,” Honma said. “However, if both smartphones and paper can serve the same purpose, I would recommend paper.”

 So, you need to assess your screen to ensure it’s as optimal for you as possible – and we have an entire page of advice to help you do just that.

Our guide will help you find the correct settings for your pc; most of it is intuitive, e.g., brightness, font, text size, adjusting for glare etc.

But as we said, you need to account for your bias, and this is when you need to become objective and use tools to help you.

https://www.screenrisk.com/ss/scorescreen.php  will help with objectively assessing the accessibility of your screen.

From here, you can take the results your receive to HR/HSE ( or both)  – along with our reference guide of the rules and regulations that should be implemented.

Or you take matters into your own hands and look at what you can do to improve your experience of working on your screens.

This post describes some wonderful inventions that we can all use to ease the intensity of working with a screen all day, and this post will advise whether your screen could be damaging your eyesight or you simply need to get an eye test!

But there is still more you can do.  

 And this is where colour contrast enters the frame.

Our visual system can become overwhelmed by colour contrasts (think black/white, purple/yellow). Legislators are doing their best to encourage best practices for websites to reduce harm and increase accessibility.

Southampton University has created a short video explaining how to ensure the use of colour is both on brand and accessible.

Why look at colours?

The wrong colour contrast (black text on a bright white background is poor colour contrast) causes fatigue of the visual system, which causes fatigue of the body, which leads to mistakes, which leads to presenteeism. Still, we carry on and on, essentially and unknowingly, self-harming.

Think about all the images you see on screen during the day – social media scrolling, work-related graphs, charts, whatever. It’s a lot – and your visual system, created for scanning the horizon and looking at your hands, must decipher and translate all that it sees on-screen to your brain.

It’s a lot of work and something we all take for granted – until you get tired, have sore eyes, headaches, and no longer sleep well and you, a smart person, are on a dumb hamster wheel.

Colour contrast is an issue – and now we are seeing the likes of Widows creating options to change the colour contrast in your browser, but it’s not perfect, still needs work, which is why people in the industry are discussing it and creating improvements where they can.

There are apps out there where you can choose a background-coloured theme for your pc, and they help – but here’s where you need to risk assess and be aware of your bias because you might not like the colour orange in any hue,  but what if an orange tone is an optimal colour for you?

The objectivity of testing is vital.

Colour contrast therapy works when it’s individualised. Objectivity means you don’t choose a colour you like – it means the software selects a colour that works for you. One that will soothe your eyes, and aid in reading and working on a screen – basically one that helps your visual system do all the heavy lifting.

Here are a few tools regarding colour contrast:

One will objectively choose the optimal coloured background for your visual system, the second to assist with accessibility issues.

  • Patented Display Screen Optimiser, providing a personal, objective assessment of the best background colour contrast values for you. It’s a self-administered, interactive, online test and takes 15 minutes to complete.
  • The Bureau of Internet Accessibility is more web design-related. They state: “The tool is offered free of charge and is intended for website owners and developers to test their web pages for colour contrast issues that can impede usability for people with visual disabilities.”

Risk assessing our environment, especially our work environment is something that HSE ad HR should be doing, but when you realise that only 10% of businesses are implementing Display Screen Equipment regulations, hot desking is a real thing, and many are now working from home – it is down to us to risk assess for ourselves.

 If you don’t want to join the ranks of the 58% (pre-Covid) DSE operators that already suffer from screen fatigue, then you must act and do something about it.

You need to get on your own white horse because currently, there’s no cavalry from HSE insight.

What can I do when ‘don’t do as I do, do as I say’ is dismissed by my children, as clearly, I’m spending as long on screen as they are?

Hmm, good question.

Years before covid arrived on our shores, the WHO classified a global pandemic of a different kind.

One of Display screen users’ 3D vision loss.

A few years later, in 2018, regulations were released to help mitigate this 3D vision loss, in the guise of WCAG 2.1 Colour Contrast Validation Standard for e-learning & websites. (HSE RR5612007)

It was created to recognise the 2007 statistics of 58% of those using digital display screens in the workplace presenting with a range of visual and physical repetitive stress injuries, often referred to as MSD’S – Musculo-Skeletal Disorders.

In 2020, MSD’s which are conditions affecting muscles, nerves, tendons, joints, cartilage and spinal discs, often caused by repetitive stress injuries and adaptations, often caused by manual handling and Display Screen Equipment use – have persisted as the second highest cause of ill health’.

The number of children now presenting with 3D vision loss has skyrocketed and is linked to overexposure to the near and close up, prolonged periods of display screen use, coupled with lack of time outside in natural daylight.

So, it’s not without reason that wellness and health experts are screaming at you to put your phone down, your laptop away and “disconnect” and want you to do the same for your kids.

No one anticipated the 2020/21 pandemic and how that would increase screentime.

Yet here we are, and still today, no one in ‘power’ mentions the pandemic is increasingly disrupting children’s eyesight, in effect mirroring the visual repetitive stress injuries seen in the workplace.

We know the addiction to social media is endemic (it’s designed to be).  Netflix got many of us through lockdowns, and zoom was essential for family contact and work. But what if reducing screentime or exposure control is not an option?

We’ve all read the articles about reducing screen time for your children, but what do you do when life is lived online or through a screen, and you can’t reasonably reduce the amount of time online?

According to a recent study, the incidence of ocular problems has dramatically increased in line with the continuous rise in digital media consumption.

An estimated 49.8% (4.8 billion) and 9.8% (0.9 billion) of the global population will have myopia or high myopia.

Myopia is short-sightedness. But it’s more than simply wearing glasses because distant objects appear blurred. It’s also about distance and depth perception.

Which impacts the way we live our lives.

It’s not able to see loved ones faces at a distance. Driving becomes more challenging, and navigating life becomes more difficult and expensive due to eye checks every year.

But children were learning online before 2020, and with digital literacy programmes sponsored by Apple, computers have been steadily making their way into schools. Then, with the pandemic, online schooling became the norm.

Preschool? Screentime is there, too, with a third of preschool toddlers having their own tablet.

UK  children spend an average of 23 hours a week online or looking at a screen.

UK adults spend over 5 hours a day – and we don’t believe this solely refers to the time at work.

Digital display screens are here to stay, so we need to become savvy about mitigating the harms they do because exposure control alone, limiting time online, is challenging.

So, we won’t tell you to get your kids off their screens. Instead, we will give you the information to make informed decisions for yourself and your children.

The Eye Science of fatigue is similar to sleep fatigue in terms of triggering the HPA Axis of hormones directly linked to stimulating our stress responses.

This means it activates the survival fight, flight or freeze reactions to a real or perceived threat.

In adults, this activation can result in cyclical behaviour.

For example, knowing you can’t reduce the stressors/fatigue related irritability in the workplace, you go home in a mood, too often self-medicate, unwind while still over-stimulated by staying on-screen, and then can’t sleep—the cycle repeats.

Translate this behaviour to children, and they come home moody, slump in front of the pc, and stay up watching videos or playing video games, messaging friends, and can’t sleep.  The cycle repeats.

So how do you do best for your child, knowing they will be online for most of the working week and that it impacts their physical, mental and emotional health?

With less than a couple of weeks to go before it’s ‘back to school’, the first step is to be aware of the school environment and policies regarding screens.

Talk to the school – do they have a policy regarding phone use?
  • Is there one for the amount of online time allowed per session, per day?
  • Do they have enforced vision breaks every 20 minutes?
  • Are they aware of calibrating digital display screens to reduce vision stress and eye strain?
  • Do they know how to make reasonable adjustments – e.g. re-calibrate Screen Colour Contrast, increase the font size, avoid glare and/or ask for help to access accessibility features?
  • Ask too about their school accessibility policy and whether they actually have an Accessibility Statement. For example, do they have a policy of complying with Accessibility Regulations for e-learning and digital display screens? (Spoiler: it’s been over two years since introduced so they should be compliant).
  • Are they compliant with sufficient ambient lighting policies surrounding day and/or supplemental artificial work-lighting, and are the display screen positioned so free from glare?

The aim is to reduce the eye fatigue that leads to general fatigue and the cycle outlined above.

Kids use their phones in school, and they use PC’s – so teach them how to adjust the screen brightness to reduce glare. The glare from an overhead light or screen makes it much harder for our eyes to focus, which cause the eye muscles to become tired as they overwork – much like doing too many reps at the gym.

Laptops, again if it belongs to your child, adjust the screen performance – the brightness, font and text size to suit them, and of course, get them their own personal DSO themed background colour that reduces the colour contrast.

The DSO reduces fatigue and mitigates against the likes of screen fatigue, which will impact their learning.

We have an entire page dedicated to mitigating the risks of digital display screens, plus a post that outlines 14 quick and easy things you can do today.

Of course, reducing time online is essential; using the 20-20-20 rule of after 20 minutes look away for 20 seconds, at something 20 feet away is a must, perhaps you could pass this onto your kid’s school too?

Schools will have a lot o their plates in 2021,  the attainment gap is widening, and some now say children from more deprived areas are a good 22 months behind their more affluent peers. However, further damaging eyesight and increasing stress for children due to poorly calibrated screens don’t need to be part of the issue.

If you’ve reached this far, this video might be worth your time.  We are addicted to our smartphones; we miss out on human interaction when we’re online, and perhaps we can all benefit from turning off the devices now and then?

Ultimately, it’s the human interaction, interpersonal relationships in person or on-screen that is essential for children’s inclusion, growth, learning and development, not their smartphones.