Test For Dyslexia

If you are in the UK, you have probably watched the program with Kara Tointon who has struggled with dyslexia all her life. Kara was very brave to allow herself to be filmed reading and undergoing a formal assessment for dyslexia as you could really feel her embarrassment. That said, she had been diagnosed as dyslexic when she was 7 years old and had learned to cope with it. Acting of course is a difficult profession to choose for someone with dyslexia as learning lines becomes more difficult.

One thing you would have noticed is her joy at having special reading glasses that contained coloured lenses that allowed her to read much faster. In Kara’s case, her problem was that word segments on the page moved around, changed in size and depth, and that lines appeared and light ‘blotches’ further added to her difficulty. She also tended to decode words in segments and did not seem able to recognise the whole word, often guessing incorrectly.

Now these glasses are not new. They are based on a lot of research into coloured lenses, a great deal of this research has been done at Essex University by Prof Arnold Wilkins and at the Irlen Insitute in the US who were probably one of the first to investigate this phenomena. Irlen frequently give negative reviews on research by others, a lot of it was worthwhile, some was not. However, they refer to the phenomena here as the Irlen syndrome.

What it basically suggests is that the way we look at a page of words is affected by how our eyes tend to focus differently which is not helped by the spacing between the words, the font, the contrast and much more. This is why a lot of people get migraines when they read a lot, they may not be dyslexic, but using coloured lenses may also help them by forcing both the eyes to focus in the same way.

Now Kara’s colour was green, but before you go rushing out to get green tinted glasses there are one or two things you need to know. It was a specific green tailored to her needs, green isn’t everyone’s colour and that glasses would need to have a slightly different spectrum of your colour than you would need for overlays.

The glasses do not come cheap, but if you can afford it, or can get a grant, then as you sawe they make an enormous difference. Each eye may need a very slightly different colour for optimum benefit. If you can’t afford the assessment and the glasses, experimenting with different coloured overlays will make a substantial difference as well. These overlays are clear tinted sheets that you simply lay over the page and read through. These should be affordable for all and if you think your problem is based on a visual disturbance you should try them. I have seen these working with adult dyslexics as well as children, and seen a rapid improvement in reading speed, which of course impacts on comprehension as there is more time for short term memory to process the information correctly. You can easily excuse your use of them in public by saying they prevent eye strain (which they do) and avoid you getting so many headaches (which they do)!

I just wanted to get this up quickly, but will add the links very shortly to this page. In the meantime, visit the Irlen pages and do some of their SELF TESTS.  If you have not already done so, I’ve found a page that gives you instructions on how to change your computer background colours etc., it’s listed ont he blogroll on the right of this page.

Note: You can purchase the overlays HERE. You will also find a lot of other useful resources there as well and they ship products internationally the same day.

Another note: You can find out where to be assessed for visual stress by visiting the Irlen website or this SITE where you will also find details of Professor Wilkins research as mentioned above.