01The small print

Terms of Use

These are the terms of use of bealer.org. They are short because the site does one thing: it lays out the BEALER range with the figures we hold on each pair, and it sends you to our retail partner to buy one.

What this site is

A catalogue and a set of guides. Every product page prints the lens and frame measurements, the material, the lens rating and the price from our own product data. Payment, delivery and returns are handled at checkout with our retail partner, not on this site. Nothing is sold, stocked or shipped from here.

Prices and figures

Prices come from our own product data and are refreshed on a schedule; the figure at checkout is the one that counts, and where the two disagree the till wins. Measurements are in millimetres as the brand publishes them, and a millimetre or two of variation between one pair and the next is the nature of moulded frames rather than an error on the card. Where a figure is missing from a card it is missing because we do not hold it.

Sunglasses and ultraviolet light

UV400 on a lens means the lens is rated to stop ultraviolet light up to a wavelength of 400 nanometres, which covers UVA and UVB, the two bands that reach the ground. That rating is the whole of what a sunglass lens does about the sun; polarization is a separate property that cuts reflected glare and, in the words of the American Academy of Ophthalmology, provides no UV protection on its own. The academy also says a darker lens is not a safer lens and that the sun's rays pass through haze and cloud, so the number to read on any pair, ours included, is the UV rating rather than the tint. A pair of sunglasses is not treatment for any eye condition, and light sensitivity that arrived suddenly is a question for an optometrist or ophthalmologist, not for a lens. The sources behind that paragraph, with the date we read them, are listed on our updates page.

Screen glasses and blue light

The lens in our screen glasses carries a coating the brand rates as filtering part of the blue band of visible light, and that is the property we print. What that coating does for you is a separate question, and on it the American Academy of Ophthalmology is direct: the small amount of blue light coming from a screen has never been shown to harm the eye, the evidence shows no meaningful link between blue light and damage to the retina, and blue-light glasses are not necessary. The tired, dry feeling after a long day at a monitor is real and the academy attributes it to blinking about half as often at a screen, not to the colour of the light. These frames are sold as a clear-lens frame with a coating; they are not a treatment for eye strain, headaches or sleep, and we do not say they are.

Children's frames

Children need sunglasses for the same reason adults do and, according to the American Optometric Association, for longer: they spend more time in the sun than adults, and the harm from ultraviolet light adds up over a lifetime. The academy of ophthalmology says plainly that babies and children need hats and sunglasses. The lens in our children's frame carries a UV400 rating and a polarizing film; the frame bends because it is made of a soft thermoplastic rather than a rigid one. Bendable is not the same as unbreakable: US regulation requires the lens in every pair of sunglasses to pass a drop-ball impact test, and a pass in that test is all that impact resistant means. A pair that has been sat on or stepped on should be looked over before it goes back on a face, and a child with a red, watering or light-sensitive eye needs an eye doctor rather than a darker lens.

None of this is medical advice

Nothing on this site is a diagnosis, a prescription or a treatment. The frames here are non-prescription eyewear; they correct nothing, and a clear lens with a coating is still a plain lens. Trouble with your sight, pain in bright light or a change in what you see is a matter for an eye doctor, and the guides here say so where it comes up.

Links to other sites

Where a page here cites an outside authority, the link goes to that authority's own page. We do not control those pages and they can change after we read them; the date we read each one is printed beside it.

Changes

These terms change when the site does. The date at the top of the updates page is the date of the current version. Questions: shade@bealer.org.