Dyslexia or Visual Processing Issues?

[handmademitlove]

My DD (18, ASD, at university) struggles with reading, particularly serif fonts / coloured text / contrast. She is having issues with some of her lecturers and the university has said they cannot mandate non-serif fonts as part of her SSP as the workload for staff would be too high. She had no issues when learning to read, no issues with phonics or spelling. I am wondering which is the better route for assessment which may lead to more precise recommendations that could help. She has text-to-speech through DSA but it does not handle STEM literature well! We could look at visual stress or a full dyslexia assessment, but I think it unlikely to be typical dyslexia due to the issues being entirely related to the printed word. Does anyone have any experience or suggestions that may help?

Hi. You seem to be describing visual stress or visual difficulties that can co-occur with dyslexia but is not in itself dyslexia. These problems are not picked up during a normal eyetest and it is advised to see a behavioural optometrist where they may prescribe coloured lenses in glasses or a coloured overlay. See www.babo.co.uk/

She has a visual stress appointment in a few weeks. My younger DD already has coloured lenses for a similar issue but hers was much more obvious - no particular issues with fonts but moving characters, skipping lines etc. Hopefully that will give us a starting point as to whether coloured lenses / overlays would be helpful. The difficulty is that "visual dyslexia" is not usually a diagnosis of itself - and she doesn't seem to have issues with phonological differentiation in any way - so not sure if a dyslexia assessment would help with this?

Just a quick update - visual stress testing at the optician showed clear issues and so we are going to try coloured lenses. There was a significant increase in reading speed and accuracy with them.

So glad you went and had the assessment.