Visual Therapy

Apart from refraction (nearsightedness, farsightedness, and/or astigmatism) that can be corrected with prescription spectacles, effective vision also depends on the ability to use all the muscles in and around the eye in unison.

Sometimes children with visual problems can be incorrectly labelled as having dyslexia, ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) or ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder). For children with visual problems, most of their concentration and energy is going into keeping objects or reading material single and clear, with very little concentration and brain energy left to process the information. These children tend to lose concentration and interest easily. For more information go to: www.add-adhd.org.

Visual therapy is a type of physical therapy for the eyes and brain. It helps improve many of the common visual skill problems that can lead to reading and learning problems.
Some of these visual skills include:

Accommodation
The ability to maintain focus at all distances. This focal change is a change in contraction of the eye's ciliary muscles around the lens. Close work requires a high demand of accommodation, while looking in the distance requires accommodation to relax. This change in focus needs to occur instantaneously. Copying notes off the board is difficult for a person who has an accommodation problems, the words go in and out of focus.

Binocularity
Binocularity is the ability to use both eyes as a team with good binocular coordination. Binocular skills include:

Convergence – the ability to focus on a near object or an object that is moving closer to your eyes

Divergence – the ability to focus on a distant object or an object that is moving further away from your eyes

Versions (tracking and saccadic) – the ability to follow a moving target (tracking) and jump from one target to another (saccadic) smoothly and accurately

Ocular Alignment – aligning your eyes on an object or word accurately

These skills are essential for reading and writing. Poor binocularity is often what causes people to skip or confuse words or skip lines while reading. Precise eye movements are not only necessary for reading, but also for following the ball in sports and depth perception for driving.

Apart from prescription spectacles and visual therapy, we also use the Reading Plus® program for reading assessment and improvement. Reading Plus® assists with developing a solid foundation for reading fluency and increases reading rate and comprehension for people of all ages and skill levels.