This Simple Test Could Change Lives

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This Simple Test Could Change Lives

Thousands of Britons dismissed as ‘learning disabled’ may simply have an eyesight condition that is easily treated

By Jerome Burne

The autumn of 2003 was the lowest point in Alan Reid’s life. The Edinburgh PR consultant and his wife Antonia were concerned about their daughter Ella, who was failing dismally at school. Ten years old, she could barely read or write. Now a consultant paediatrician had recommended testing Ella to see if she had some sort of genetic damage. As a parent, Alan felt utterly defeated.
Then a chance encounter prompted Alan to take his daughter to an optometrist in Edinburgh who specialised in children with learning difficulties. Alan didn’t hold out much hope. “Ella’s had several eye tests before,” he told optometrist Dorothy Crystal. The latest was at the city’s main eye hospital, where she’d scored a perfect 20/20.
Yet, after examining Ella, to Alan’s amazement, Dorothy announced that Ella’s eyes weren’t focusing correctly. “She lacks binocularity,” Dorothy said. “It means your eyes don’t converge at precisely the same point.”
Even though Ella might be letter perfect when reading an eye chart, it was a different story when she was looking at words close up. The information from each eye did not form a single image. What she saw were two overlapping versions of words, making reading
extremely hard and tiring.
Then it was Alan’s turn to be tested. Finally Dorothy turned to him and said, “I wonder how you’ve managed to cope all these years. You’ve got extremely poor binocular co-ordination.”
Suddenly, all sorts of things made sense to Alan. Why he’d had to work so hard at school; why he’d only been able to skim books; why he found it hard to hold someone’s gaze because it made his eyes water. Only a determination never to give up had enabled him to make a successful career.
It seemed the treatment for binocular instability was simple. Dorothy prescribed a combination of eye exercises and corrective glasses.
That Christmas a whole new world opened up for Alan. His nose was hardly out of a book. Within a week he’d read a trilogy on the Great War, Vanity Fair and a treatise on Russian constructivism. Before, even a page had been hard work.
The effect on Ella was especially marked; their moody, angry child had become happier, more outgoing. “I felt frightened a lot of the time,” she admitted. “When I tried to concentrate on someone’s face, I’d see four eyes and two noses. I thought that was what everyone saw.”