Contents
This whole site is effectively a book. Chapters introduce new concepts as appropriate, and later chapters build on the knowledge of earlier chapters. Feel free to browse, but this will all make a lot more sense if you read through from the beginning.
Introduction
Welcome, general information about this site and how to use it.
Part 1: Eyes, Vision and Vision Impairment
When you are building a house, build the walls before you put on the roof.
We have an intuitive sense of how we see, but in fact most people don’t really understand how our vision works. Before we get on to trying to understand how eye conditions impair vision, we have to have a good understanding of how our eyes and vision normally work.
Chapter 1: Four Things to Know About Vision
An introduction to some core concepts about eyes and vision. Did you know that only a small part of your vision sees detail? Do you know what 20/20 means? Read on…
And for vision professionals, four… let’s call them ‘conversation-starters’.
Chapter 2: Understanding Eyes
If you want to understand vision, you need to start with understanding the structure of eye itself, in all its marvellous complexity.
Chapter 3: Vision and Vision Insufficiency
Introducing important concepts that explain how we see, and the everyday experiences that can give us all insight into vision impairment.
Chapter 4: Understanding Vision Impairment
What happens when things go wrong with our sight? If we’re going to understand how to make things right, we need to understand how things go wrong.
Part 2: What To Do About It — Spot reading and General Tasks
Now that we understand about eyes, vision, and vision impairment, we turn to the main question — if you’ve got impaired vision, what can you do about it?
This isn’t a section on how to treat eye diseases. This is about how to make the most of your vision even though you have a vision impairment. The one we tend to think first is a magnifying glass, but there are a whole lot of other options available as well. But which is best?
Chapter 5: Understanding Low Vision Rehabilitation
A review of the various ways we can intervene to help you see. It’s not just about making things bigger.
Chapter 6: Understanding Magnifiers and Low Vision Aids
There are many and varied forms of magnifier, and other low vision aids as well. How are they different? What are their pros and cons?
Chapter 7: My List of Best Magnifiers for General Use
The range of low vision aids can seem overwhelming. Here are the ones that I think are the most helpful for the most people.
Part 3: The Challenge of Fluent and Comfortable Reading With Impaired Vision
“To acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself a refuge from almost all the miseries of life.”
William Somerset Maugham
One of the most common things we hear in the Low Vision Clinic is that people want to get back to reading books, or the newspaper or magazines. They want to enjoy losing themselves in the experience of reading again.
So, now that we’ve covered magnifiers and lamps and so on for the purposes of allowing you to achieve ‘spot’ reading, reading fluently is just a matter of doing it all faster, right?
No, sorry — there’s a lot more to it than that. Fluent reading is one of the marvels of our sight, a task that pushes the visual system to the max. There are other factors that can limit your ability to read fluently. Some of them relate to particular aspects of vision impairment, affecting some people but not others. But other factors are limitations in the type of magnification device itself — some magnifiers just inherently aren’t suitable for fluent reading.
So the next three chapters are devoted entirely to examining this particular task —reading fluently and comfortably.
Chapter 8: Understanding Fluent Reading, and the Impact of Vision Impairment
Fluent reading requires both comfort and speed. Comfort is not so hard to achieve, but speed is a next-level challenge. We examine how our eyes normally achieve reading fluency, and how vision impairment can interfere with the process.
Chapter 9: Understanding Magnifiers for Reading Books — the Good and the Bad.
For a variety of reasons, not all types of magnifier are suitable for the sort of fluent, immersive reading we associate with reading books. And some might be fine for other people, but not for you. We discuss why.
Chapter 10: The Best Magnifiers for Reading Books.
In which we delve deeply into which magnifiers are decent options for getting into that stack of books you’ve had piled on your bedside table. The emphasis is on finding practical options that give you the best chance of reading both quickly and comfortably.
Part 4: Notes on Specific Conditions
Certain conditions tend to produce certain patterns of vision impairment, and also may have their own ‘quirks’. This section is devoted to understanding the challenges and solutions that are most likely to be helpful for people with those conditions.
(Chapters still to be worked out in detail, but will include Glaucoma, Macular Degeneration, Cataracts, Achromatopsia, Stroke and Hemianopia, Diabetic Retinopathy, Corneal Scarring, etc).
Chapter 11: Macular Degeneration
Macular degeneration is the most common condition I encounter in the Low Vision Clinic. It has its own special quirks — read this chapter to learn all about them.
Part 5: Extra for Vision Professionals
This is where I expect to put a group of pages covering topics that are only likely to be of interest to vision professionals, and that don’t really branch off from the main topics covered. Likely to have things like discussion of my low vision examination routine, etc.