What is Vision Therapy?

Vision therapy is an evidence-based program to treat visual problems including lazy eye, eye turns and binocular vision problems. Vision therapy is a customised and personalised treatment program provided by optometrists with post-graduate training and years of experience.

Who Benefits from Vision Therapy?

Vision, Reading & Learning: Visual Learning Disabilities

Vision Therapy can help those individuals who lack the necessary visual skills for effective reading, writing, and learning (i.e., eye movements, eye tracking, eye teaming, and focusing skills, convergence, eye-hand activity, visual memory skills, etc.).

Children or Adults with Eye Tracking Problems

Vision Therapy helps individuals develop normal eye tracking and eye teaming skills. When the two eyes fail to track and move together as an effective team (binocular vision), performance in many areas of life can suffer (reading, writing, sports, depth perception, etc.).

Colorimetry Assessment

Colorimetry testing tells us what colour tinted spectacles to prescribe. The overlay test does not work in the same way as colorimetry, which is why there are separate types of tests. In colorimetry, a lightbox is used with lots of coloured filters, to help determine the very specific colour and its density for the lenses.

We have had lots of success with coloured overlays and tinted spectacles. Many people report a significant improvement in both the comfort, speed of reading and comprehension. Some children have found they may jump several reading ages in a short space of time.

Is this Dyslexia?

‘Dyslexia’ is a term used to refer to reading problems that are not due to poor teaching. Dyslexia is often associated with spelling difficulty. Visual Stress is NOT the same as dyslexia but is more common in those who are dyslexic. People who fail to read because of visual stress are frequently mis-diagnosed as dyslexic. For this reason it is important that the existence of visual stress is identified at an early stage. Once the visual stress has been treated, the remaining problems are more easily dealt with. Visual stress can occur in non-dyslexic individuals. Symptoms may become more apparent when an intensive reading is necessary, as when studying for exams.

Visual Stress and Photosensitive Migraine

A significant proportion of migraines are induced by visual stress. For people with visual stress related migraines, looking at particular colours, lights or visual patterns can cause incredibly painful headaches. The occurrence of visual stress related migraines can result in a condition called photophobia. Migraine attacks have many triggers, including stress, particular foods and hormones. About 40% of migraine attacks may be visually-induced by flickering light, patterns or reading. These attacks may be helped by precision tinted lenses.