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Visual Stress

5 replies

Zanthey · 24/01/2016 22:57

My daughter has severe Visual Stress and problems with focussing. She needs text size 32 bold, double spaced, in order to read fluently. She has bifocals, coloured filters on her glasses and two sets of overlays, (all of which do not compensate her fully). She also has dyslexic tendencies but is not failing at school. I would like to know if anyone's child also needs large print and has anyone managed to get an EHCP for Visual Stress? Thank you x

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frazzledbutcalm · 25/01/2016 09:35

Hi Zan .. No idea about EHCP as I'm still struggling to get the go ahead for one for dd with asd. Haven't even gone there regarding the visual stress side of things. Sad

But, mine have coloured lens glasses ... you shouldn't need an overlay if your dd is wearing the glasses. The glasses do the same job only MUCH MUCH better/more precise. Mine have their colours re-assessed every 12 months (or sooner if we think there's a problem). Could your dd need re-assessing and her colour changing?

Mine initially had - dd1 1 green lens, 1 purple - 8 months later changed to both blue lenses. dd2 1 yellow lens, 1 green lens - 8 months later changed to both blue lenses. ds2 both blue lenses, 8 months later both pink lenses. Our practitioner says the brain 're-wires' itself when wearing the glasses so the need for change is very common.

Dd1 has large print, different font, extra spacing and different colour paper, both at college and when she was at school for her GCSE's.

Also, ds2 reads books from here ... they're written on cream paper, different font .. and make a MASSIVE difference to ds's ability to read!

Hope this helps.

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Zanthey · 25/01/2016 12:58

Hi Frazzledbutcalm! Thanks yes your reply does help. Sorry to hear about your children's' difficulties but glad to see that you have got support in place.
My DD doesn't have prescription coloured glasses, just clip on blue filters from a dyslexia charity. I will explore getting full tinted lenses. Did you go through the Mears irlen.org? The large print your DD uses, would you mind letting me know the approximate font size? My daughter currently uses size 30, which seems massive. She's had a visual impairment teacher do the Wilkins rate of reading test with her. The results showed that she could read fluently only with font size 32. Maybe with the glasses that would come down. Thanks for all your help x

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frazzledbutcalm · 25/01/2016 17:55

Hi Zan .. the correct tint glasses are way, way better than overlays .. they get your prescription colour from over 1 million shades/hues! I went here Testing was free where as Irlen centre was approx £250 each. I'll see if I can find what font size dd used. There's lots of practitioners now do the colour testing. From my experience your dd would be able to improve her reading massively with the correct tint.

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Zanthey · 25/01/2016 18:12

Thanks! I think I'll pursue the glasses as asking the school to enlarge to font 30 is difficult/costly for them. The optometrist we saw did suggest them but then he couldn't find s colour that suited her and suggested to come back in 3 months. Thanks a lot for sharing your experience x

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frazzledbutcalm · 26/01/2016 12:38

Zan ... if the optometrist couldn't find your dd colour then he's not much good to be honest. We had problems finding ds's colour on his last visit. Mr Jordan was at a loss (which I've never seen of him before), but he refused to give up. Ds was quite complex, but Mr Jordan went back to basics and started with his batch of approx 15 base colours. Ds was shown a basic black and white square grid ... without his colour glasses he saw it as lines and tubes twirling all over the page Shock Mr Jordan then put his basic colour glasses on ds and ds had to say if the colour made any difference, even a small difference. He narrowed it down to 3 colours that made a small improvement. He then worked with him on the 'colour machine' (as we call it) and eventually found the best colour from there. It is very complex! We travel from the North East (4 hour trip each way) to see Mr Jordan, partly because the testing for 3 of mine works out much cheaper, but mainly because Mr Jordan is so good.

Fwiw, I wouldn't leave it for 3 months for your dd ... honestly, the difference for my dc with these glasses is huge, truly remarkable.

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