Good vision is more than just the ability to see clearly. It is the ability to understand and respond to what is seen – from whatever source – for hours on end. The vision skills that served our ancestors -- seeing animals and enemies at a distance -- are not enough for youngsters in today’s school environment. Check your child for near vision problems with our children’s vision screening test.

A large part of learning is done visually – reading, chalkboard work, and computer use are among the tasks students tackle all day long, day after day. Each involves the visual abilities of seeing clearly and understanding visual information – usually at less than an arm’s length from the eyes. Such near vision work demands very different skills from the distance vision tested by the 20/20 chart.

Just as many of us don’t have good 20/20 distance vision, many of us also have problems with the skills required to sustain near vision tasks. Near vision requires that your eyes work as a team – called binocular vision –

- to converge -- aiming together to combine the images from each eye into one,
- to accommodate – curving the lens to bring images into clear focus,
- to fixate – moving the eyes across a page fluidly and then jumping to the next line.

Learning can be impaired if eye movements are slow or clumsy if the eyes jump, "stutter" or lose their place when reading a book or from a computer screen.

If your child does not have adequate near vision skills, asthenopia or eyestrain symptoms may occur. It’s not a seeing problem, so glasses alone won’t fix it. It’s an eye muscle problem. Check your child for binocular problems with our CHILDREN'S VISION SCREENING TEST.

If good visual skills have not been developed, learning is difficult and stressful. Children may react in one or more ways, including:

• avoiding reading and other near visual work as much as possible,
• attempting to do the work but with decreased understanding,
• being an "underachiever,"
• having a short attention span,
• getting fatigued easily.

While vision problems do not "cause" learning disabilities, poor near vision skills can impede remedial efforts by interfering with the learning process. Vision therapy has been proven to be an effective tool in helping people with vision-related learning problems.