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Reading Difficulties Newcastle

I saw a young girl today who is in Year 9 at school. She was screened about 3 years ago and was given an overlay. We recommended that she come back for the Irlen lenses, but for whatever reason, she was provided with tinted lenses from an optometrist that were the same as the overlay. She has also been using violet paper for handouts etc. Recently, one of her teachers noticed that when she was reading with these tinted lenses, she was reading better on blue paper than the violet paper, so she suggested that the girl come back to the clinic to check the colour. During the assessment, I pointed out that when wearing Irlen lenses, white paper looks white but softer, so that the lenses don’t make it feel like you are in a green world, or pink world etc. She was surprised at this, as she said that when she wears the lenses from the optometrist, the page is changed to violet and she actually had commented to her mother that when she has them on and looks around, she feels like everything looks violet. There are some optometrists who have a machine called a Colourimeter and they use it to select coloured lenses for children and adults. It involves looking down at a page of text while they change the colour of the light shining on the paper. We recently saw another person who had lenses selected this way and they also said that the paper looks coloured when they are looking through them. I was also told about a little girl who had been given a yellow overlay at the screening appointment, and instead of bringing her back to the clinic for the correctly tinted lenses, her mum took her to an optometrist who gave her yellow lenses. She is constantly saying in class that they hurt her eyes and give her headaches, so the teacher has been telling her to tell her mum. She said that she has, but mum just says she has to get used to them because that’s what the optometrist said. I want to stress how important it is for the tinted lenses to be selected by an Irlen Diagnostician, because the colour of the lenses is often different from the colour of the overlay. So if you know of any people who have done this, maybe you can pass this information onto them.

Reading Difficulties Newcastle - Dyslexia & Irlen Syndrome - Irlen Diagnostic Clinic
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