How Vision Therapy Helps with Dyslexia
Looking for a way to manage dyslexia symptoms? Whether you or your child have dyslexia, vision therapy may offer an effective way to improve essential visual skills needed for reading and learning.
Dyslexia and the Eyes
Although dyslexia is a learning disability, some people with dyslexia have vision problems that make reading, writing, or spelling even more difficult.
Nearsightedness, farsightedness, and astigmatism aren't the only problems that can affect vision. You may still have trouble with your vision even if you don't need glasses or your vision has been corrected with eyeglasses or contact lenses.
Several underlying vision problems can make dyslexia more difficult to manage, including:
- Eye Tracking and Teaming Issues. Your eyes must work together as a team and move smoothly as you read a line of text on a page or watch a tennis ball sail through the air. Problems with eye tracking or teaming can make it difficult to keep your place when reading or cause blurriness or double vision.
- Strabismus. Strabismus refers to eye misalignments. The condition is commonly called "crossed" eyes, but alignment problems can also happen if one eye is aimed slightly higher or lower or turns outward more than the other eye. As a result of alignment issues, the brain receives slightly different information from the eyes. Vision suffers as the brain tries to combine signals from the eyes into one sharp image. Strabismus can cause blurry or double vision, shifting images, poor depth perception, and trouble reading.
- Amblyopia. Amblyopia (lazy eye) also affects your reading ability. The brain fails to acknowledge information from one eye if you have amblyopia. Uncorrected strabismus can be a factor in amblyopia. If you have strabismus or amblyopia, you may notice it's easier to see if you tilt your head to favor your good eye or cover one eye.
- Accommodation Problems. Accommodation issues affect the ability of the eyes to focus at varying distances. Focusing issues can cause difficulties with reading and writing, including copying numbers and letters incorrectly or reversing letters and numbers.
- Poor Visual Perception. Visual perception involves the brain's ability to correctly interpret the information from the eyes. Symptoms may include poor eye-hand coordination, illegible handwriting, or difficulty organizing or ordering words and number on the page.
- Visual Memory Issues. Reading or math difficulties can occur if the brain struggles to store the images it creates. Poor visual memory may make it difficult to remember a paragraph you've just read or recall multiplication tables.
A research study published in JAMA Ophthalmology in 2018 explored vision disorders in children that can occur along with dyslexia. According to the study, 55% of the children with dyslexia had accommodation issues, compared to 9% of children with typically developing vision. Sixty-two percent of children with dyslexia had difficulty with tracking compared to 15% in the typically developing group.
Vision Therapy Benefits
Your vision therapist performs a comprehensive vision exam that helps pinpoint specific vision conditions that could worsen your dyslexia symptoms. Based on your diagnosis, you'll receive a treatment plan that includes a range of activities designed to improve vision deficiencies and conditions.
Although vision therapy can't cure dyslexia, correcting underlying vision disorders may improve the effectiveness of techniques used to manage dyslexia. The therapy improves coordination between the eyes and the brain and can even create new pathways in the brain.
During a vision therapy session, you may play matching games to improve your visual memory or try a computer game designed to help your eyes work together as a team. Special games and activities could help your brain correctly process information from both eyes and may be combined with prism lenses. Prism lenses bend light entering the eyes and properly align light rays on the light-sensing retina at the back of the eye.
Are you ready to find out if vision therapy could help your dyslexia symptoms? Contact our office to schedule an appointment with the vision therapist.
Sources:
Cleveland Clinic: Dyslexia, 4/11/2023
https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/6005-dyslexia
PMC: JAMA Ophthalmology: Frequency of Visual Deficits in Children with Developmental Dyslexia, 7/19/2018
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6583865/
All About Vision: Dyslexia and Vision: Are They Connected, 7/28/2022
https://www.allaboutvision.com/eye-care/parents-kids/dyslexia-and-vision/
Optometric Vision Development & Rehabilitation Association: Dyslexia