17 High Street
Oxfordshire OX20 1TE
9am-5pm Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday & Friday
9am–1pm Thursday & Saturday
Visual Stress refers to reading difficulties, light sensitivity and headaches from exposure to disturbing visual patterns. It can be responsible for print distortion and fatigue when reading. The severity of these symptoms can vary from person to person.
The symptoms can occur despite normal vision.
Approximately 5% of the population are severely affected by Visual Stress and 20% to a lesser degree.
Symptoms of visual stress are not always immediately obvious. Many individuals who suffer with this condition believe the discomfort they feel when reading or the distortions they experience on the page are “normal” and experienced by everyone. That is until someone presents them with an appropriate colour and they realise that reading can become more comfortable and even enjoyable.
Using an overlay at an early stage could save years of anxiety and prevent the downward slide in confidence which occurs in most cases where children struggle to read.
Dyslexia is a term used to describe various specific learning difficulties that affect the ability to learn to read and spell correctly. Visual Stress is NOT Dyslexia but can be particularly prevalent in Dyslexic individuals. If Visual Stress is identified and colour is used to alleviative come of the symptoms then other learning difficulties such as Dyslexia are easier to cope with.
Many people with Dyslexia may also suffer with visual stress and can therefore be helped by colour. Equally there are a large percentage of children and indeed adults who are not identified as being Dyslexic but still suffer with these symptoms. The appropriate coloured overlay or Precision Tinted Lenses can also help this group of individuals.
It is therefore important that overlays should not be reserved only for those pupils who have been “statemented” or identified as being in need of specific help. They should be available to any child who does not naturally like to look at books.
At Woodstock Opticians we test for the appropriate colour overlay and then assess the benefit of using it when reading using the Wilkins Rate of Reading Test.
Woodstock Opticians © 2014
website design - Ready Design