Eye care
Visual Stress
Visual stress is also known as visual dyslexia, Meares-Irlen syndrome and scotopic sensitivity syndrome. Many children and adults suffer from visual discomfort when reading. This can affect reading fluency, concentration and comprehension and can cause rapid fatigue. Visual stress can cause symptoms such as movement of print, rivers running through the print, headaches and eyestrain.
How Colour Helps
Use of colour has been found to be hugely helpful in reducing the symptoms caused by visual stress. Professor Arnold Wilkins and the Medical Research Council designed and carried out this research with the use of the Intuitive Colourimeter to prescribe precision tinted lenses. It is this system that is used at EYE Opticians in our consultations. The system is validated by the British Dyslexia Association and the College of Optometrists in the UK, and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the USA.
A number of people who have been found to be ‘visually dyslexic’ are highly talented, such as Mozart and Sir Anthony Hopkins, and yet sight difficulties such as visual stress can, and sometimes do, result in a child being considered educationally challenged. Visual stress can also cause concentration difficulties and general feelings of frustration and isolation in the individual affected.
Try it now
Take Our Visual Stress Test
Is the black and white text uncomfortable to read? Choose a coloured panel to change the background behind the text. Does the colour make it easier to read? If so, you may have visual stress.
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. Pack my box with five dozen liquor jugs. How vexingly quick daft zebras jump! The five boxing wizards jump quickly. Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow. Many people find that lines of small black print on a bright white page seem to move, shimmer or blur, and that reading quickly becomes tiring. Try the same text on a tinted background and notice whether the words settle and the page feels calmer.
Questions
Visual Stress Questions Answered
Answered by your Birmingham-based eye experts.
Is visual stress the same as dyslexia?
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 alleviate some of the symptoms, then other learning difficulties such as dyslexia are easier to cope with.
Who can be helped by colour?
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.
Does visual stress affect adults?
As people get older and text is not such a meaningless group of words, visual stress can be less pronounced, but still there. In a lot of cases the syndrome goes undiagnosed and untreated until adult life.
How is the colour of precision tinted lenses assessed?
The colour of the lenses can only be assessed by using the Intuitive Colorimeter, which uses a much larger range of colour combinations than the overlay assessment. This gives a much more accurate colour specific to each patient, and is usually carried out by our experienced opticians. The assessment takes about 1 to 1.5 hours.
When you wear glasses the whole of your visual field is coloured, so that you are fully adapted to that colour. The Intuitive Colorimeter takes account of this and tests in the same way, so that no other colour of light is involved. Overlays, on the other hand, only cover part of your visual field, so white light plays a big part. This colour adaptation factor means that the colour of lenses is different to the colour of overlays.
What are coloured overlays?
Overlays are sheets of transparent coloured plastic which are placed over the required text. They are used as a screening tool to determine if colour will be of benefit to each patient. They can alleviate some of the visual stress, making reading more comfortable. Each child will benefit from a different colour. To assess the benefit of a chosen colour, the Wilkins Rate of Reading test can be carried out.
What are the signs of visual stress?
- Moving closer to or away from a page
- Becoming restless
- Using a finger as a marker
- Skipping words and lines
- Rubbing eyes and blinking excessively
- Low self-esteem
- Lack of concentration
- Movement of print
- Blurring of print
- Letters changing shape or size
- Letters fading or becoming darker
- Patterns appearing, sometimes described as “worms” or “rivers” running through the print
- Illusions of colour, which can be blobs of colour on the page or colours surrounding letters or words
- Rapidly becoming tired
- Headache or eyestrain
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, is “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.
What causes visual stress?
Visual stress could be a result of light sensitivity, the appearance of patterns in text and glare effect. It is currently believed that visual stress is linked to too much activity in the visual cortex, the part of the brain responsible for processing vision.
How long is an overlay trialled before lenses are prescribed?
If the child continues to use the overlay unprompted, or the teacher or parent reports an improvement, it has most likely been beneficial. The overlay is usually given for a trial period of approximately six weeks to rule out novelty factors. Glasses with coloured lenses can then be prescribed. These are more convenient as they can be used with board work. The tint is a much more precise shade as many more colour combinations can be used. Again, the tint will vary from person to person.
How common is visual stress?
People with visual stress experience discomfort and sometimes pain on viewing specific visual patterns and colour combinations. This can affect their ability to read standard formats of printed text and can even cause migraine. Around 20% of the population experience some symptoms of visual stress. Visual stress was recognised in the 1930s and our understanding of how it works is changing and improving all the time.
Which conditions is visual stress found alongside?
- Dyslexia
- Dyspraxia
- Photosensitive migraine
- Photosensitive epilepsy
- Autism
- ADHD
- Head injuries
- Multiple sclerosis
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