Glasses which focus at your computer distance (which varies by personal preference; measure it and take that number to your optometrist) help with presbyopia.
However, there are many other eye ailments which tend to appear later in life and which glasses alone cannot correct: cataracts, macular degeneration, corneal dystrophies, etc. Some are treatable through other means such as surgery.
The majority of people who lose visual accuity as they age don't get macular degeneration or cataracts during their working years, they just need reading glasses.
It's a bit like saying 'my head hurts' and someone says 'take some tylenol' and you say 'some people have flesh eating brain viruses or prion diseases'.
You're not technically wrong but those aren't the things that affect most people complaining about font size.
I agree with you that most people only need reading glasses — or more precisely computer glasses, which are typically set to focus at 20-24 inches rather than 16 inches as is common for reading glasses.
However, I think you are understating the problems posed by other conditions. The prevalence of cataracts by age 64 is in the neighborhood of 15-20%.
> The prevalence of cataracts by age 64 is in the neighborhood of 15-20%.
But what is the lower bound where it starts to get that common, is the question? Does it affect people in their careers that often? probably not.
>Dismissive attitudes like this among the visually acute are one reason website accessibility is generally so poor.
Sorry you disliked my analogy but it has nothing to do with website accessibility, merely the way you structured your argument/post in reply to my reasonable response of 'get glasses' to jumping to macular degeneration.
> But what is the lower bound where it starts to get that common, is the question?
This data is available at the NIH link I posted earlier, which breaks things down into 5 year spans.
The lower bound is 10%, since that's the prevalence by age 59.
> Does it affect people in their careers that often? probably not.
The data makes this assertion obviously wrong. A huge number of people get cataracts during their working years.
Fortunately, surgery to treat cataracts has a 95% success rate. Unfortunately, it's not 100% (and anecdotally I know multiple individuals in the lucky 5% whose vision has not improved after cataract surgery.)
Wearing glasses for 12 hours a day after just wearing contacts most of the time for a few months can be jarring. I always forget how tiny it makes everything look!
But it's not the only option. Another option is a bigger screen with bigger fonts. And that's a lot easier to adjust to than glasses. I know because I tried glasses first and then went to a bigger monitor.
