Sunday, 20 May, 2012

Sound Tracks (details)

This website is for people with undiagnosed problems with their eyesight, the friends and family who support them, and the professionals and policy makers worldwide who can bring about change.

In the UK, today the basic state eye test is flawed. This goes with the territory of low cost mass provision. Hard to detect instances of binocular instability (BI) - a form of overlapping vision - (see panel left) test as normal.

The Department of Health's stated strategy for England and Wales is to get more people in England and Wales to take the flawed basic eye test, rather than raise the bar on existing provision.

In Scotland, we know from Government research that this is a problem for one in five of the population*. A million citizens with either visual stress or binocular instability - two of the conditons which are not picked up by standard testing.

Problems can range from mild blurring on the page which gets in the way of reading with ease, to more insidious problems that deeply distress sufferers on a daily basis, while the basic eye test reveals absolutely no cause for concern. These problems can include:

	Hard to detect squints that can play havoc with vision, hearing, and emotional well-being.
	Inter-mittent double vision - where it is actually physically impossible to read.
	And visual stress that leaves sufferers 'learning disabled' - forced against their will to give up reading anything other than what is absolutley necessary.

Written off?

The long term consequences on the prospects of sufferers is immense, and impossible to overstate.

For those with an undiagnosed problem with eyesight, training for a profession or any skilled work that requires a good deal of reading is not an easy option. Perhaps no option at all if the words on the page are really blurred. Unless, that is, the problem is sorted out when the sufferer is still young and career doors remain open.

THE ASSUMPTIONS WHICH DON'T ADD UP

Regular Health Department 'sweeps' pick up any problems in the system of provision.

Sufferers of BI can get their glasses upgrade accordingly.

Astonishingly, this failure in provision is not new, nor news to British politicians and their civil servants

Just a system of provision that has evolved and gone unquestioned by political administrations for well over 20 years.

The UK media, has, however, recently started to show some real interest in the issue.

This is partly because of the growing numbers of students with a statement of needs for learning difficulties - a natural knock on effect to the seven fold increase in young people from all backgrounds going on to higher education in the UK

And some of the methods that are used to diagnose and treat those for whom any form of higher education has long ago been ruled out because of attention disorders.

Forty years ago undiagnosed eyesight problems would have automatically ruled out higher education unless the student came from the wealthiest and most supportive sectors of society.

While today coping and supportive strategies including life long medication are encouraged and put in place.

Without any kind of detailed eye examination for undiagnosed problems such as hard to detect binocular instability and visual stress being first made.

The result? Conditions which can only be picked up in an hour long detailed eye examination by an optician with highly specialised training in countering specific learning difficulties go undiagnosed and uncorrected.

And people suffer.

A lot.

Here’s what the press and broadcast media has recently had to say.

Some documents on this website may require the FREE Acrobat Reader. It can be downloaded here.