Hi everybody, I just read an interesting bit of information about a solution for stabilizing text on a page. It involves a special set of lenses you read through. There are lots of ideas out there to help manage the many issues that arise from being Dyslexic and I recommend you look at this one.
The website is www.readfluent.com and it tells about a study Dr Robert Dahlem is doing to establish the effectiveness of his patented devise, the RAD Prism glasses. His explanation of why this devise works is very simple, that light is not coming into each of the eyes in the same manner with individuals with trouble reading. The “glasses” alter the way the light comes into the right eye and apparently this allows both eyes to read the text on the page in the same manner. According to the 300 participants so far these glasses work extremely well.
We are always happy to let our loyal readers in on new systems and methods out there that help with Dyslexic issues. Even though this new invention is in its early stages of development we think it looks valuable to many people. I do have a couple of things I would like to address about the website and the doctors definition of Dyslexia.
One of the links at the website I noted above is “Get the RAD Prism”. There they list a series of common symptoms of Dyslexia. Yes those are some symptoms of Dyslexia but not really the most common ones. They are the symptoms that most people hear about when they talk about Dyslexia and they are also seen by teachers and parents most often. However, of equal importance are the other indicators of Dyslexia that we see with the adults and students we talk to when we do our workshops, presentations and assessments. These other indicators include; difficulty understanding complex and abstract instructions, getting mixed up with directions, mixing up left and right, confusion over fractions and measurements, difficulty telling time or being on time, miscomprehending what a person has explained because the “Big Picture” wasn’t included in the explanation and more difficulties with concepts that the Dyslexic or right-brained individual considers as abstract. So rather than say the RAD Prism lenses cure Dyslexia lets just say it seems to help with the problems of instability of black text on the page.
On another blog I read earlier today I saw an interesting response to the RAD Prism that is something we actually do during our Assessment for Dyslexic Issues. It involves using different coloured clear transparencies over text. We have found the results to be instant and often very dramatic and costs next to nothing. Students report that the words stop moving and usually their reading speed and comprehension increase immediately.
Dyslexia is a very large and complicated topic and we will continue to bring more of the latest news about research and studies pertaining to Dyslexia. We always say in our presentations to parents, teachers, psychologists, service providers and care givers of all types, use as many methods as will work. There is no one single way to manage Dyslexia but there sure are lots of simple methods that can make a big difference.
Our books describe Dyslexia as a Learning Differenceand we have many teaching methods for various Dyslexic issues. We invite you to take a look – www.dyslexiavictoria.ca
Happy trails
Howie deGraaf
Editor for Dyslexia Victoria Online
If you have questions please email me at:degraaf@dyslexiavictoria.ca
Rants & Raves by Dyslexia Victoria Online 
I also sell prescription visual dyslexia glasses. It is very important to have a proper papillary distance ( the distance between the pupils) so that the center of focus is directly in front of the pupils. If not the eye will be drawn to the center of focus and cause visual problems.
It is possible for eye doctors to report the P.D. as 2 numbers and in some countries that is the convention. That does imply that asymmetrical faces do exist. Every eyeglass prescription I have received has either a single number for P.D. or two identical numbers for the right and left eye. That means that my customers to date with visual dyslexia do not have asymmetrical faces.
The Rad glasses have different corrections for different degrees of being asymmetrical. The correction is determined by a trial and error method. I don’t understand why that couldn’t be predicted by individual P.D. measurements. It seems a simple geometry problem.
I also have a money back guarantee for my prescription See Right Dyslexia Glasses. Because of the extra cost,time and effort required for prescription glasses I require my customers to discuss the visual problems they have before I fill their order. To date I have not had any returns for my prescription glasses.
During my research with my glasses I did interview several dyslexics who only found they were visually dyslexic after seeing normally for the first time with my glasses. One visual dyslexic didn’t know that seeing words as if underwater and waiting for each word to float to the surface individually before it could be read was not normal. He was surprised when my glasses made all the words in focus at once.
I haven’t found a certain way to identify visual dyslexics that can not describe their specific visual problems and so I don’t market my glasses to that group. I have found that dyslexics ( with no described visual problems)who increase their reading fluency with increased text size normally benefit from my glasses. The logic being that increased text size has little to do with language processing problems. This is also the reason many moderately visual dyslexic children have no problems with big print books and only develop reading problems when print size is reduced about third grade.
Visual dyslexia is not as complex a condition as dyslexia. It is a sensitivity to visual noise caused by auto fluorescent proteins changing the path of photons from optical information into photons of visual noise. Filtering out the different wavelengths that activate the proteins extinguishes the noise that causes the visual problems.
I wonder if perhaps much of dyslexia results from a similar sensitivity to auditory noise letting the noise be processed with speech as their brains develop rather than just the speech. Early speech delay? ……….. just speculation.
what RAD prism mean or stand for?
I am guessing RAD are the inventors initials as his name is Robert Dahlem . I have never RAD are the initials of the inventor .I have never seen RAD actually mean anything else. Being that I sell See Right Dyslexia Glasses that are designed as universal visual dyslexia glasses that are effective at removing described visual problems that make reading difficult but have no ability to deal with the more common language based problems associated with dyslexia , I am skeptical about any visual intervention that claims to help generalized dyslexia problems that are not visual.
Unlike dyslexics , visual dyslexics have trouble seeing text in a clear focused stable and complete manner . While the results of visual dyslexia can cause some similar problems to dyslexia such as less fluent , slow and inaccurate reading , the causes are visual difficulties . Moving text or missing letters are the most common problems but there are a wide assortment of other visual problems. Those who experience the text as moving are having what can be imagined as trying to read in the back seat of a car going down a washboard road. If you can’t determine what all the letters are in words reading becomes an unending game of Wheel of Fortune where you can’t even buy a vowel .
Visual dyslexics can often be identified by improvements in reading difficulties associated with reading much larger text. Larger text size doesn’t help dyslexics because their problems aren’t visual. Visual dyslexia is really a small scale visual problem. At some increased size moving text problems generally are perceived as vibrating edges to the letters and so there is enough stable information to read in the centers of the letters. Also at some larger size more of the missing letters will be visible with smaller parts missing.
Similarly , visual dyslexics generally don’t exhibit the early delayed speech , trouble rhyming , and language processing problems that can often be noticed in dyslexic children before they enter school . Their visual problems may be delayed as long as the print they encounter is large enough to make out in their early books and may only show up when the print size is reduced later.
Visual dyslexia and dyslexia have different causes and need different interventions. While not a reading problem , visual dyslexics have a higher chance of having poor depth perception . See Right Dyslexia Glasses restore normal depth perception for those visual dyslexics.