Irlen coloured lenses
Overview
We are trying to break down the barriers to learning. We are raising awareness. Irlen overlays and tinted lenses help people who have believed they are simply ‘dumb’ or those that have dyslexia to enjoy reading and improve comprehension. Many find relief from migraines and sun sensitivity. We try to make it easier for people. We can be mobile and we have worked with school-wide screening.
If you know of any avenues for funding support for our whanau, please get in touch.
If you have a large staff and wish to support their wellbeing, please get in touch. We welcome opportunities to present and share.
If, like myself, you have a personal testimonial of wearing Irlen glasses, please get in touch.
Take a self-test on www.irlen.com
Book an initial screening for forty-five minutes with a Registered Irlen Screener in NZ. Ask at your school or search on the Irlen.com website.
They will make a recommendation as to whether colour will make a difference to your page distortion or your discomfort when reading.
An eye examination is essential . There, you will have the health of your eyes checked and, if needed, receive a prescription for visual acuity .
Choose your frames.
Let the optometrist know that your frames and lenses will need to be sent to the lab in Christchurch to have the lenses dyed.
For some, the use of a coloured Irlen overlay is enough to relieve the discomfort and distortion of print. For others, there will be benefit in wearing lenses for writing and to relieve visual stress.
Book in for an hour with your local Irlen Diagnostician, who will diagnose the colours for your tinted lenses. There are 300,000 potential combinations of colours, so we will choose the right combination to be of most benefit to you. This colour prescription will be sent to the lab and added to your glasses to achieve the perfect result. The glasses will then be returned to your optometrist for you to pick up.
Results include:
Better Concentration: Improvement in concentration by removing unneccessary visual distractions.
Reading fluency: As visual aberations are reduced, the reader has more time to concentrate on reading instead of trying to figure out what is on the page.
Comprehension improvement:
Becoming better at reading helps the mind retain information better and thus improves comprehension
Increased Confidence: As visual distractions and aberations are removed, the reader is released to be more confident in reading and retaining information better.
Calmness: As all of the above takes effect, the end result is a sense of calm.
Questions.
Headaches, Light sensitivity,
Watery eyes, Excessive blinking, Fatigue, Poor attention span, Poor focus.
Blurring of print, Movement of print, Missing lines and/or words, Losing place in text, Difficulty copying, Doubling of text, Pattern glare
Research shows 12% of the population benefits. That is about 3 in a school class! Any eye colour, any gender. If there has been a reading difficulty identified, there is a 48% chance of coloured lenses making a difference.
Optometrists check the health of the eyes and your eyesight to ensure you experience healthy 20/20 vision. That is your visual acuity e.g. short or long distance vision.
You may need just prescription glasses or coloured lenses, or you may need both.
Sometimes the symptoms of a stigmatism are similar to the flickering experienced by Irlen clients. We need to rule out the health issues first.
A New Zealander, the late Olive Meares, was the first person to bring visual perception problems to an international journal . This is where Helen Irlen, the founder, started her quest to find an instant way to remedy these problems. She was the first to dye lenses using colours, to reduce visual stress and page distortion. In England, this is still recognised as Meares-Irlen technique, in Olive’s honour.
Blue. Aqua or Turquoise were found to help a large proportion of Australasian clients, so lenses in these colours were developed for the market.