The backlight is an electroluminescent panel which glows a nice cool blue color. Unfortunately when its off its kind of an ugly pinkish color, but why would you ever turn it off?
Its controlled by a button on the left side of the calculator and powered by the calculator's own AA batteries.
The inverter is the tiniest one Adafruit sells. Its so tiny, it can't even power the whole EL panel until you cut it down to the size of the screen. Don't try to test your panel until you cut it down to size.
A new polarizer is optional, but recommended for this project. You can buy new polarizing filters on Amazon or your favorite science shop.
Don't do this project right before finals or anything important (unless you have a spare calculator). It is an extremely invasive procedure and theres a high risk of bricking your calculator.
This should also work on any TI-8X calculator except the TI-89. The 89 has two ribbon cables going to the LCD instead of just one. The arrangement makes it impossible to remove the LCD without desoldering at least one ribbon cable. Good luck with that.