Everyday vision problems can interfere with your ability to read, use a computer, drive, and watch television without blur or eye strain.

Excessive visual effort can interfere with your attention and comprehension, and reading fluency and accuracy.

Vision problems can make you less efficient and effective at work and play, and cause annoying symptoms such as eye strain and headaches.

Visual acuity is only a measure of how clearly the eye can see letters, generally at 6 metres away! Reduced visual acuity can cause eye strain, headaches, squinting and difficulties with recognising small print.

Emmetropia is when eyes are a normal power to perfectly focus at distance.

Hyperopia occurs when the eye is a weaker power than normal, resulting in extra focus effort, especially for near visual tasks.

Myopia occurs when the eye’s power is too strong, resulting in blurred distance vision, caused by excessive near effort in some cases. Read more about Myopia.

Astigmatism occurs when the front surface of the eye is oval in curvature rather than round. It usually causes blurred vision at distance and near.

External eye assessment involves the health of the lids and lashes, front surface of the eye, and function of the pupils. Internal eye health assessment during our eye examination includes the eye’s lens, retina, blood vessels and optic nerve.

Eye Movement Skills (Pursuits & Saccades)

Eye movement skills are necessary for a person to accurately point and move the eyes. Poor eye movements skills can cause one to lose place when reading, require the use of a finger to keep place when reading, skip or omit small words when reading and in some cases reverse small words, eg no & on, was & saw. This may also affect sports performance.

Accommodation

Accommodation is the ability to easily maintain clear focus for reading and writing, especially for extended periods. The focusing system must also be able to quickly and accurately change focus from board and book many times. Problems of accommodation can cause headaches, eyestrain, blurred vision, reduced concentration and comprehension, and reduced reading fluency and accuracy.

Read more about Focusing Problems.

Binocular Vision

Binocular vision is the ability to use two eyes together as a team. A person’s eyes may have a tendency to cross or turn outward. Often they actually do cross or turn outward. Reduced ability to team both eyes can cause double vision, fatigue, avoidance of close work, short attention span and eye strain, or an obvious turned eye.

• Phoria is the accuracy of aiming of the two eyes together.
• Fusion is the strength of teamwork of the two eyes.
• Stereopsis is a measurement of fine depth perception.

Read more about Eye Coordination.

Colour Vision

Colour vision is the ability to discriminate and name all colours. Approximately one in twenty boys have problems with discriminating shades of red and green.

This is inherited, usually from their mother's father. Nowadays, colour vision problems are not a barrier to most occupations, but can affect learning in subtle ways. Careful assessment of the type and degree of colour vision problem is important.