The Light Barrier : Understanding the Mystery of Irlen Syndrome and Light-based Reading Difficulties

Rating:
Summary: Factual AND Important
Review: It is a sad state of affairs when medical doctors and reading experts "pretend" that dyslexia can only be caused by a failure to pronounce words because they don't yet know how to properly test children for visual processing problems. Visual processing problems are REAL and the research that documents their existence is consistently ignored--hurting millions of children throughout the world. This book lists study after study that documents visual processing problems and color as an appropriate intervention. The American Optometric Association even recently changed its opinion on color to reflect that it DOES benefit some individuals with reading problems. Any one who would dismiss the physical properties of light (our brains know them as color, but really it is all about wavelengths and particles) as relevant to reading and physical comfort obviously is ignorant about physics and simply doesn't "get it." Poor them! They'd rather we live in the "dark ages" (forgive the pun). Way to go, Rhonda Stone! I have light sensitivity, too. It's about time someone wrote about it.

Rating:
Summary: Emotional not factual
Review: This book is a repetitive, emotional recounting of one family's problems. The mother doesn't get her daughter tested by a reliable, trained psychologist with experience with learning disorders, she just goes haring off after the next trendy thing, then she wants to make sure you agree with her.

Dyslexia is not a visual problem, it is a neurological processing problem. Glasses or colored overlays won't raise a kid's reading level--getting the brain to recognize sounds and the relation to symbols is the answer. The International Dyslexia Association has reliable information.

I am sure there are people who are bothered by lights and so on who feel better when they wear dark glasses or whatever. It is just not a cure for specific language disabilities.

I see the Irlen Screeners as desperately needing more "sufferers" to justify the cost of their training. "But it worked for MEEee!" is not an acceptable answer to "where is the research?"

Rating:
Summary: Impressive and readable
Review: This is a good, solid book on the topic of light-related reading problems. The author, who has problems with light sensitivity herself, has two children who encountered reading problems and other problems of visual perception that were remedied by using tinted lenses and colored sheets of plastic. She describes their lives before getting glasses and overlays, the puzzlement of opthalmologists and other specialists, and the vast improvement in their lives afterwards.

This book is more readable and goes further than its counterpart, Helen Irlen's _Reading by the Colors_. In particular, it describes people whose visual perception is distorted everywhere, not just on the printed page. This is a little-discussed aspect of the phenomenon that has come to be known as Irlen syndrome, since the original discovery of the use of color in helping people's visual perception was based on reading alone.

However, it still mostly concentrates on reading and contends that anyone with severe enough visual perception problems for everything to be distorted would have significant reading difficulties too. I am an autistic and hyperlexic person whose level of visual distortion in everyday life has been described as severe, but whose reading is relatively unaffected despite distortion of the printed page. I was puzzled when my Irlen screener described me as having more severe Irlen syndrome than he did, because it seemed to me that he had more severe reading problems than I had ever had. The book makes the same mistake, and also describes people like me as extremely rare. It makes me wonder if we are simply under-researched because we don't present with reading difficulties, and if time will show greater understanding of our particular kind of visual perception issues. This is the only significant hole I could see in the research the author had done.

A more minor problem I saw was that the book sought to excuse the high price and virtual monopoly by one company of the screening and tinting techniques. As a person on a very limited income, I only went to them and paid that much because I was desperate to be able to leave my house without being visually assaulted with distorted fragments of color. I wished that there were high-quality options available without paying all that money, and was disappointed to see that the book glossed over this by proclaiming it cheap in comparison to exorbitant prices I could never afford for other educational techniques or vision therapies.

The glossy section in the middle of the book goes beyond showing reading distortions, and shows distortions of the rest of the world as well. It also shows the same text with a number of different colored backgrounds, showing how this might affect a person's reading comprehension. There are sections for parents and for professionals, although none on what to do if you are an adult discovering that you have these problems. Many of the suggestions, though, can be used by anyone.

The author has done an extensive amount of research into the subject, understands that a lot is not known about why these things work, and provides lists of studies at the back that are pro, con, and neutral on the topic of color as used in helping people with reading difficulties. There is also a list of Internet resources at the back.

This is probably the best book on its topic to date, and I'd highly recommend it. I look forward to books that take some elements of this book, particularly its discussion of the non-reading-related aspects of Irlen syndrome (visual distortion and fragmentation) that apply to my life more than the reading-related ones do, and go further with them, though.

Rating:
Summary: Impressive and readable
Review: This is a good, solid book on the topic of light-related reading problems. The author, who has problems with light sensitivity herself, has two children who encountered reading problems and other problems of visual perception that were remedied by using tinted lenses and colored sheets of plastic. She describes their lives before getting glasses and overlays, the puzzlement of opthalmologists and other specialists, and the vast improvement in their lives afterwards.

This book is more readable and goes further than its counterpart, Helen Irlen's _Reading by the Colors_. In particular, it describes people whose visual perception is distorted everywhere, not just on the printed page. This is a little-discussed aspect of the phenomenon that has come to be known as Irlen syndrome, since the original discovery of the use of color in helping people's visual perception was based on reading alone.

However, it still mostly concentrates on reading and contends that anyone with severe enough visual perception problems for everything to be distorted would have significant reading difficulties too. I am an autistic and hyperlexic person whose level of visual distortion in everyday life has been described as severe, but whose reading is relatively unaffected despite distortion of the printed page. I was puzzled when my Irlen screener described me as having more severe Irlen syndrome than he did, because it seemed to me that he had more severe reading problems than I had ever had. The book makes the same mistake, and also describes people like me as extremely rare. It makes me wonder if we are simply under-researched because we don't present with reading difficulties, and if time will show greater understanding of our particular kind of visual perception issues. This is the only significant hole I could see in the research the author had done.

A more minor problem I saw was that the book sought to excuse the high price and virtual monopoly by one company of the screening and tinting techniques. As a person on a very limited income, I only went to them and paid that much because I was desperate to be able to leave my house without being visually assaulted with distorted fragments of color. I wished that there were high-quality options available without paying all that money, and was disappointed to see that the book glossed over this by proclaiming it cheap in comparison to exorbitant prices I could never afford for other educational techniques or vision therapies.

The glossy section in the middle of the book goes beyond showing reading distortions, and shows distortions of the rest of the world as well. It also shows the same text with a number of different colored backgrounds, showing how this might affect a person's reading comprehension. There are sections for parents and for professionals, although none on what to do if you are an adult discovering that you have these problems. Many of the suggestions, though, can be used by anyone.

The author has done an extensive amount of research into the subject, understands that a lot is not known about why these things work, and provides lists of studies at the back that are pro, con, and neutral on the topic of color as used in helping people with reading difficulties. There is also a list of Internet resources at the back.

This is probably the best book on its topic to date, and I'd highly recommend it. I look forward to books that take some elements of this book, particularly its discussion of the non-reading-related aspects of Irlen syndrome (visual distortion and fragmentation) that apply to my life more than the reading-related ones do, and go further with them, though.