Eye Care Services For Patients With Learning Difficulties
Here at Fiona Watt Optometrists, we provide exceptional eye care services for patients with learning difficulties. Good vision is imperative to childhood development and regular eye examinations are essential to maintaining good healthy vision. We understand that visual skills are essential for learning and our optometrists can help to provide the optimum eye care service for children who are struggling with their vision. For more information or to book a consultation with us today, please call us directly or use our online contact form.
Journey To A Clearer Future


Treatments
All of the fundamental components of learning rely heavily on the strength of visual skills. It is important to treat vision problems as early as possible in order to enable a child to reach their full potential – and to facilitate optimal outcomes. At Fiona Watt Optometrists, we are passionate about providing the best treatments to treat poor eye vision within children and people with learning difficulties. We will arrange an appointment with you and your child so that we can analyse what problems may be being experienced. Our optometrists will measure your child’s visual acuity to assess if they need spectacle correction or contact lenses to improve their vision.
The following treatments may include:
- Prescribing coloured overlays.
- Prescribing tinted lenses.
- Precise correction of sight problems with spectacles.
- Orthoptic eye exercises (this helps to alleviate convergence weakness).
- Spectacles that incorporate prisms.
Coloured Overlays
Coloured overlay testing sets enables the optometrists to identify the existence of visual stress. We recommend that any child struggling with reading is tested with coloured overlays, not only those who are thought to be suffering from dyslexia.
A testing set consist of eight different coloured transparent sheets. Each sheet is put over a text allowing the individual to choose the optimal coloured overlay, frequently shown to improve greater comfort in reading.
If one finds the use of a coloured overlay successful, they may benefit from a full colorimetry assessment. This allows the optometrist to accurately find the precise precision tinted lenses. These lenses can then be prescribed into spectacles. Precision tinted lenses are more of a long term solution and are more convenient for copying from the board, from another book or when using the computer


Colorimetry Protocol
We recommend anyone who struggles to read should make an appointment with one of our optometrists who will check for any existence of refractive errors, such as long or short sight or astigmatisms. Eye examinations for children are free under the provision of the NHS. It is important to rule out or treat other vision deficits before testing for visual stress. Your optometrist will then refer you to our in house visual stress clinic with Neha Patel.
The recommended Visual Stress assessment process follows a 3 stage protocol:
It is essential that every individual who struggles to read or believes they may suffer from symptoms of visual stress, first undergoes a full eye examination. This is important to rule out any ocular problems. This test is available free of charge for all school aged children, under NHS provision. Our optometrists will also check for any ocular motor balance defects and binocular function. If a defect is found, exercises may be recommended.
Having ascertained that ocular problems are not the cause of symptoms, an overlay assessment is recommended. Different coloured overlays are used over a particular text and the child chooses which overlay they have optimal reading vision. The chosen overlay is then used with the Wilkins Rate of reading. The patient is asked to read a passage of text twice, with and without the chosen coloured overlay whilst the optometrists counts the amount of words read per minute in both scenarios. If proven, that the patient is able to read more words with a coloured overlay, the optometrist may suggest the patient use an overlay and return within a few weeks, noting any improvements.
Any improvement in reading speed and accuracy of 15% and above can be considered a successful outcome.
Following successful use of a coloured overlay, we may suggest a colorimetry assessment. The patient many benefit from a more long term solution by using the Intuitive Colorimeter. A precision tint may be prescribed as appropriate with the colour being specific to each individual’s needs, much more precise than an overlay and very often a different colour to the overlay. Coloured lenses are also much more convenient than overlays for board and computer work.
For more information, please read https://ceriumvistech.com/patient-questions/