My vision is worse than average for software developers. In addition to accuity (not the subject of this question), one problem I have is light-sensitivity. I find that staring at a computer monitor all day with the standard Windows black-on-white scheme is painfully bright.
I already have anti-glare treatment on my computer glasses (a special pair tuned for the monitor focal distance), and I've dialed down the brightness on my monitors (LCD) as far as it will go. I've walked through the temperature-color settings on the monitor to find the combination that, to my uneducated eye, looks best, and I've walked through all the display settings in the Windows control panel, including the acessibility ones. My opthalmologist is not technically savvy and does not have specific advice to offer (beyond the special glasses).
Even so the screen was too bright (headache within the hour), so I switched to a reverse-video scheme (light tan on dark brown rather than white on black, which seems more comfortable). This works well in general, but some applications and some web sites hard-wire colors that then don't work for me (for example, hard-wiring black text without setting a background color). It seems I would be better off if I could switch back to a dark-on-light scheme (not necessarily black-on-white but something more muted), if I could figure out how to make it work.
So my question is: with a dark-on-light color scheme, what strategies can I use to reduce the bombardment of light-colored pixels that hurts my eyes? My desk is in a dark corner of an open-seating plan (though I have two full-height walls). There are overhead fluorescents nearby but I've gotten the ones closest to my space turned off. I am free to add any type of lamp and change my monitor settings. I am not free to install new software (except via a long approval process that often ends with "no"). OS is Windows XP now, but answers for Windows 7 will also be welcome (we'll be moving to that). I see flicker at 60Hz so avoid fluorescents.
Trying every possible combination of {Windows control panel, monitor color/brightness, Windows color scheme, desk lamp} is combinatorically implausible, hence this question.