Visual dyslexia affects 10 to 20per cent of the population.
Those with it have difficulties in the areas of reading, tracking when reading, letter and/or number reversals, confusion of small words such as was/saw, on/no and for/of, print distortions, spelling, comprehension, concentration, light sensitivity, headaches and migraines and depth perception.
A further complication is that children with dyslexia are often misdiagnosed with ADD, which may lead to a late diagnosis and a poor level of reading and writing.
My younger brother, Anthony Doueihi, has had learning difficulties.
He was originally diagnosed with ADD and was taking the medication dexamphetamine for it. Anthony was not diagnosed with dyslexia until he was age 12. This significantly affected his ability to read at the same level as his classmates.
Anthony said he found it difficult words would jump off the page.
Our mother Susan said that although there were no side effects of the medication, she would have preferred he didn't have to take it.
Nerida Crowe is a primary school teacher with 12 years of teaching experience and is a qualified Irlen dyslexia diagnostician with the Irlen Dyslexic Centre in Burwood.
She said dyslexia, known as Irlen syndrome, was not connected to optometric or opthamological issues, so a person with dyslexia may wear prescription glasses and may have carried out vision exercises but will still have problems seeing print clearly and comfortably.
Having a visual perceptual dysfunction requires Irlen to have coloured lenses to filter certain aspects of the light spectrum from reaching the brain.
Irlen lenses provide print clarity, reduce significant distortion and distraction on the page, reduce the brightness of a white page, improve tracking when reading, comprehension, concentration and depth perception.
"Once I started wearing the Irlen lenses it stopped the words jumping off the page, stopped the words getting mumbled up and got rid of the glare," Anthony said.
"Black writing on white pages gives out a glare. Wearing the lenses made reading so much easier I could finish a book."
Susan said Anthony improved when he used the lenses. "Once he got the lenses he took big strides forward," she said. "But because he was diagnosed so late he was not able to catch up to his peers.
"The lenses didn't make him read brilliantly overnight. He had to relearn to read at the age of 12 with the new glasses. It didn't take as long because words on the page were smooth in the way the rest of us see them."
Susan said it was extremely frustrating not knowing how to help her son.
"It's hard for teachers as they're only taught to teach the average student, not the gifted or the child who struggles. It was frustrating not to be able to help him because he used to try twice as hard as everyone else and only got half the result. We tried everything before we realised it was dyslexia. We tried different therapies, saw a naturopath, changed his diet, left no stone unturned. Anthony endured years of tutoring, speech therapy and occupational therapy."
Nerida Crowe said it was common for dyslexic children to slip through the system.
"My concern as a teacher is that these students are slipping through the system on a daily basis, being misdiagnosed or undiagnosed as having a problem," she said.
"The problem is that educators and teachers are unaware that this problem exists. What they see in the classroom is that children struggle with reading, spelling, comprehension, concentration, self-esteem and behaviour problems, yet they have no understanding as to what causes the problem and how it can be remedied.
"Dyslexia is a very real problem that impedes learning, behaviour and self-esteem. It's imperative that our education system recognises dyslexia as a learning difficulty because once it's recognised as a problem teachers can be informed of its implications for learning and offer solutions to the problem."
Sufferers need specific coloured lenses if significant progress is to be made. Irlen lenses use coloured tints and each sufferer requires specific colours to filter out aspects of light.
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