Would polarized sunglasses help here? They're generally pretty good at cutting down glare.

But, maybe your doctor or optometrist would be better to ask?

Black on white on LED screens gives me major migraines. When will they understand computer screens are not like ink on paper.

I'm used to interpreting "glare sensitivity" to meaning the screen is generally too bright for your eyes, but the subsequent comments about needing to use high contrast color palettes has me thinking maybe you mean something else.

Anyway: I stare at a monitor all day, and for quite a while I had some serious dry eye problems because of it. Then about a year ago I bought some Gunnar glasses ( http://www.gunnars.com/ [gunnars.com] ) and my eyes got happier within 24 hours. Wear them all the time now.

Full disclosure: I'm not even kind of affiliated with Gunnar. I just wear their glasses and I like them.

You didn't say what version of Windows you were running, so it's tough to tell what might be available to you from an accessibility standpoint. On the Mac you can invert colours, use greyscale, and alter the contrast of the screen as well as cursor size (in addition to the typical colour schemes, display brightness, etc). It sounds to me like you may be facing an uphill battle if you are trying to do this outside of what the OS supports directly.

I've got a similar problem. I've taken to filing bugs with every vendor when I encounter a forced color scheme that dishonors system settings. Fat client apps are very likely to get fixed.

Visual Studio fixes itself if you turn on high-contrast and then load your color scheme on top of it. In Windows 7, saving your color scheme with high contrast enabled saved high contrast enabled to the color scheme. In Windows 8, high contrast is always on when the color scheme is not the default.

Unfortunately, websites tend to not fix their bugs. I get too many "it's a browser bug", and one that was equivalent to "use a screen reader" even after I offered to fix their bug for them.

I suppose you could hack up a 1 bit display driver that only sends green to the monitor, or perhaps with a remote desktop client that does (incoming) -> (gresyscale) -> (green) -> (inverted green).

Invert the colors in X11 itself: xcalib -i -a

If black on white text is too bright then you probably need more light in the room. Your eyes adjust to the overall scene brightness, so if you have a bright screen in the middle of a dark field, because the lights are out in the room, then the screen will appear too bright and fatiguing. Try installing some LEDs on the back of your monitor to illuminate the wall behind the screen. That will increase the overall scene brightness and make the screen seem less harsh without creating reflections on the screen.

If it's MacOS X, go into the 'Universal Access' control panel, and there's a 'contrast' slider, and you can force greyscale, black on white, or white on black.

Most X windows managers have ways to do similar things, although in some you have to mess with configuration files.

No idea how to do it in Amiga or Haiku, though.

I have thinking about how to solve the issue programmatically. That is, once and for all. There are a few rules which could be forced upon the window server. Compiz for example has some potential in this direction, so it could be refined.

- When luminance per area exceed a user-set property, invert luminance but keep chroma. Perhaps something ImageMagick or similar could do with ease.

- Be aware of common image formats and be reasonably sure that everything else is typeface. With emerging VR we might have to invent lots of new definitions.

- When it is a typeface, treat it like the user wants text to be treated, perhaps relying on CSS templates and window/tab titles or domain names. AFAIK there is no URL for viewports, so there will be a issue of persistence.

Who the hell decided the web wanted to be white anyway? A white web is bad for mobile.

Perhaps you need someone trained to alternative explanations?

After all, several of the available color schemes were adapted using people trained in adapting color schemes. Maybe someone trained may help you.

They can be applied to any window w/ a key combo, and are fairly customisable.
Here's a custom one applied to Firefox, is one that preserves colours while inverting lightness.

http://m8y.org/tmp/biased-inverted-lightness.txt [m8y.org]
http://m8y.org/tmp/inverted-lightness.txt [m8y.org]

http://m8y.org/tmp/lightness1.jpeg [m8y.org] http://m8y.org/tmp/lightness2.jpeg [m8y.org] http://m8y.org/tmp/lightness3.jpeg [m8y.org]

Arbitrary tweaks of the values. Apologies for the relative unreadableness of the script (variable reuse, bad names) was just a quick implementation of:
http://dbaron.org/log/20110430-invert-colors [dbaron.org]

To be actually usable for routine web browsing.

Ever since my apple ][ days, when I had a color monitor, I knew I liked dark backgrounds and light text. At the time, red on black. Now I am happy with a light gray on black

Setting this on terminals is cake. Even putty can be made reasonable quickly.

However... they are the exception. Nearly everything I use regularly really works. Few support changing color schemes at all, and the ones that do, are so limited as to be useless. Pidgin and eclipse both come to mind as having mechanisms (with pidgin I believe its via plugins) to change color schemes, but only in very limited ways. You can't, change the look of many of the utility window parts, like the resources view....so the darker you make the rest, the more jarring those stand outs become.... often making it less appealing than reverting to defaults.

Of course, I have a north facing window that overlooks an old barn that the neighbors put white siding on, so the glare from that can be prodigeous during the day. Room darkening shades, preferably with wooden slats take care of that nicely.

I also highly recomend a light behind the monitor. I stuck an old lamp back there, but have some LEDs that I used to put an RGB LED version in with.... I just need to mess with the controller a bit more.

So you don't like Black on White but want the background be black?
In KDE I can make all windows or only one selected window inverse the colors.
White will become black and black will become white (and green is red and vice versa)
I tried it for the night when the laptop screen will get too bright.

If this is higher contrast for accessibility issues, while there are OS contrast settings, they will generally not correct for bad accessibility design in web sites themselves. This is a web site design issue.

If a government site, or a site for a government contractor, has accessibility issues, you can force them to fix them via the ADA (American's with Disabilities Act). If it's some other site, and your OS accessibility settings won't handle it, then you need to contact the site maintainers and explain the problem.

For me, the best solution has been to just make sure I'm operating in a well-lit room. Doesn't have to be full on halogen lights or anything, but a simple stand lamp somewhere behind you is great. Just turn the brightness down a bit on your monitor, if needed, and that should do it.

What I can't do anymore is use darker color schemes like green text on black, especially in a dark room. It's fine sometimes, but the moment you open google or something, the contrast is too much.

(1) wear a basball cap down over your eyebrows.

(2) stand on the desk and take out all but one fluorescent light tube,.

(3) see the eye doctor, and get tested fully for cataracts. operate if necessary.

I have had to follow those steps in that order. if you can't see the road with oncoming traffic at night, make that eye appointment today.

Illuminated keyboard, darkened room, reduced monitor brightness, helps me and I wear fitovers in density 3 outside.

xcalib -a -i

I spend way more time on the internet than I should, but find the matte WUXGA display on my T61 very comfortable to use.

Dude. They go dark whenever an auditor or third party software salesman walks in.

I had a similar problem. And then I had my cataracts fixed.