image007Students who struggle with some kind of Visual Stress will often have much trouble with fluency. Visual stress can impair reading and can make long periods of exposure to text uncomfortable. Visual Stress reveals itself in the following symptoms: movement of print (vibration, shifting, words breaking apart or combining, words appearing to fall of the page), blurring of print (especially the longer the exposure to the text), letters changing size, doubling of letters, letters fading or flashing, illusions of color (blobs of color moving across the page, hues around letters or words), and tiredness, nausea, dizziness, eye discomfort, eye pain, and frequent headaches when reading. A Visual Stress assessment and follow-up “Color-Fitting”, based on the Irlen System and Crossbow Education, would be appropriate for any child who often exhibits the following when reading: fluency decreases as exposure to text increases, blinks or rubs eyes often, yawns, moves close to the page, comments on disliking working under fluorescent lighting, loses his/her place often, looks away from the page frequently, keeps reading right through punctuation, sounds jerky, and avoids reading. If you suspect your child may have Visual Stress, a testing session can be scheduled with Shelly to assess the likelihood that your child suffers from Visual Stress followed by a “Color-Fitting” session to fit your child on the colored overlay that he/she best responds to. We all respond to various colors differently. Reading with the colored overlays, whether in the form of sheets or bookmarks, will greatly diminish the effects of Visual Stress. Four weeks after the initial fitting, a follow-up session will be scheduled to be sure that the chosen color is still correct. Additional modifications may be recommended for home and classroom use as well.