However, as SLF I don't quite understand that premise. Don't you guys and gals up front in the pointy end wear sunglasses? If you do, don't they help? I"m sure the sunglasses you wear are of the highest quality so I don't understand how sunlight can be of such a distraction.
I'm SLF too, but I have one question for you: "Don't you drive a car?"
If you do, you will surely have been in the situation where you find it almost impossible to look directly out of your windscreen because the sun is directly in front of you. No sunglasses are good enough to protect you from that!
On another note, there is much use here of the rather unfortunate term "Pilot Error" and as non-pilots I think we need to look at it in relation to our own situation. The closest we come to being in the same situation as the pilots on an aircraft is when we're driving our car where everything happens at snails pace compared to the speed of an aircraft in flight and I know from my own history just how close I've been to having a serious accident on more than one occasion due to any number of factors where sheer luck seems to have been the only thing between us and disaster ... and we have the advantage of being able to stop if necessary without gravity having a significant negative effect.
In those situations there are an infinite number of possible scenarios and often a similar number of solutions more wrong than right and a very fine line between "Oh s**t!! You idiot!" and "Phew, that was close! Well done!".
In a car that might mean an expensive repair job and a week on the bus ... in an aircraft that usually means many dead and injured.
So, even if this comes back as "Pilot error" don't be too quick to condemn them. That "error" may simply have been one of any number of split second decisions that had to be made which on a flip of the coin could have gone either way.
We know pilots train endlessly in simulators to avoid this but in the heat of the moment the situation may not exactly match the carefully simulated rehearsal and they're effectively on their own at that point.
Like many kids, when I was young, I dreamed of learning to fly and seriously considered it, but don't consider I have "the right stuff" to be able to react correctly in all situations. I have nothing but great respect for those who do.