Irlen-Dyslexia

 Dyslexia is a difference from ‘normal’ in visual perception impacting on reading. Irlen is the sensitivity to light aspect related to this.  Some children have excellent development of oral language but find print hard to decipher.  Decisions about about the images are made in the visual perception areas of the brain ’Your brain tells you whether the marks you are looking at make the word ‘like ‘or ‘little’ (Lyons 2003: 18).  Sometimes coloured glasses help by blocking out certain light spectrums. 

 Students often have sight checked by an optometrist to be told it is normal. It is not the vision that is the problem, but the visual perception.  Many children with ‘normal’ vision see white rivers running down the page, blurred spirals of words, see-saw patterns with lines of text overlapping each other, washed out words or moving words making reading extremely difficult.

 Students may cover the book with their hand to shade the page, turn it away from the light, or attempt to read in a dark room.  Small words often show reversed letters, and word placement is often reversed in both reading and writing.  Reading is avoided if possible and appears slow and laboured