I was fortunate enough to attend the British Dyslexia Association’s annual conference at the end of November and immediately jumped at the chance to sign up for one of the optional seminars in the afternoon on Behavioural Optometry.
I was fairly clued up about visual stress and visual processing difficulties, and their links with dyslexia, but I have to admit I was a little bit cynical about the industry as a whole, having recently seen reports by several behavioural optometrists who claim to have diagnosed ‘visual dyslexia’ (strictly against their professional body code of conduct).
Anyway, I went along and was pleasantly surprised by the presentation given by Adil Kalooji who talked at length – and very passionately – about patterns of visual disturbance, visual tracking and even why different people require different coloured tints in their lenses in order to relieve some of the issues caused by black-on-white glare… something about the excitability of neurons in the visual cortex in response to differing wavelengths of light! Kalooji was very clear that, whilst these types of visual processing difficulties are common in those with dyslexia (about 66%) it also occurs frequently in the non-dyslexic population and therefore it is distinct in its diagnosis from dyslexia.
He then went on to describe some of the ‘therapy’ and practical activities that can be used to ‘retrain’ and support the ways in which our eyes process and our brains make sense of visual information. Overall, the session was – sorry for the pun – a real ‘eye-opener’ and helped to reassure me that there are certainly Behavioural Optometrists out there who really know their stuff and who are helping to ensure that the distinction between dyslexia (a literacy difficulty rooted in phonological difficulties) and visual stress is clarified.
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