Our optometrist Francesca has completed the Professional Certificate in Paediatric Eye Care and offers a tailored reading difficulties assessment for children and teenagers who are experiencing visual symptoms when reading.  These can include:

– Headaches and eye strain after close work.

– Words going in and out of focus or appearing blurred when reading.

– Words appearing to double when reading.

– Losing place in text when reading or finding it difficult to track along a line of text.

– Text that appears to shimmer or flicker.

– Discomfort with brightness of the page.

Some of these visual symptoms can co-occur with learning difficulties including dyslexia and neurodiversity. This appointment does not diagnose or treat learning difficulties, instead it identifies and manages the associated eye problems.

The appointment is 60 minutes and provides an assessment of the child’s vision, focusing ability, eye health, visual stress and eye muscle balance to find a bespoke plan to minimise visual discomfort when reading. Treatments can include spectacles, eye exercises and/or coloured filters.

Visual stress is the experience of unpleasant visual symptoms when reading for prolonged periods. Symptoms can include:

– illusions of shape, movement and colour in the text

– distortion of the print

– loss of print clarity

– general visual irritation.

Visual stress can cause sore eyes, headaches, frequent loss of place when reading and reduced concentration.

In some cases the use of coloured overlays or tinted spectacle lenses can be used to reduce some of these symptoms; it is important to note that the existence of visual stress and the use of coloured overlays remains controversial due to a mixed body of evidence.

This is a specific rose-orange tint that blocks most blue light and flicker. Some people with light sensitivity find this reduces visual discomfort. We have tint samples to show our patients to see if the tint is beneficial.

Vistamesh is a unique spectacle lens technology by Norville. There is no apparent reason why this technology works but some patients have experienced significant relief from visual difficulties when wearing Vistamesh lenses. We have sample spectacles with Vistamesh lenses for our patients to try. At Hassocks Eyecare Centre we have light sensitive patients and migraine sufferers who have seen benefits from wearing Vistamesh.