Essilor: Essilor is a well-known eyewear company that offers a range of lenses, including those designed for dyslexia. They have developed specific lens technologies, such as Eyezen lenses, which are designed to reduce visual fatigue and improve comfort during prolonged reading or computer use. Dyslexia is a neurological condition affecting between 7-10% of the population. It is a learning disability which has an impact on a person’s ability to learn how to read and write (despite adequate intelligence and educational opportunities). The majority of research on this topic has found little evidence of measurable effects on reading accuracy or comprehension. For example, the American Academy of Paediatrics found little to no evidence supporting the link to visual stress in explaining the reading difficulties of people with dyslexia.

The effectiveness of dyslexia glasses and lenses can vary from person to person, as dyslexia is a complex condition with individual differences.Research has demonstrated that people with dyslexia often have difficulty processing and representing the specific sounds of language. As a result, someone with dyslexia will experience difficulties in associating printed letters with relevant speech sounds, thus causing reading difficulties. Some people experience visual discomfort or disturbance when they read. Common symptoms that may significantly impair reading ability, or make reading very tiring, include:

Please note the colours shown in the pictures may not be an exact representation of the colour in real life. Bright blue light can also improve auditory attention, suggesting that the effects of light on alertness and attention are automatic and not mediated by conscious visual perception. Rather they are mediated by this retino-hypothalamic synchronising system. Coloured filters, either worn as spectacles or used as overlays, have been successfully employed in the treatment of dyslexia for many years but there is no agreement about how they work. As we have seen, bright blue light increases the activation of the parts of the brain involved in directing attention, such as the posterior parietal cortex. Abnormal function in these attention-modulating parts of the brain has been implicated in the pathogenesis of dyslexia. It is therefore likely that blue light, selected optimally to recruit melanopsin RGCs, will have the greatest effect on improving alertness and concentration and may therefore be the best for remediating the impaired attentional responses seen in dyslexia. That being said, here are a few popular brands and technologies that are commonly associated with dyslexia glasses and lenses:

What is dyslexia?

Blue light therapy has also been shown to help people with sleeping problems, to improve alertness during night shift work and to help overcome jet lag. This probably also works on the suprachiasmatic nucleus to alter the timing of diurnal rhythms. We found that children whose reading benefitted from wearing blue filters during the day also often reported that their sleeping patterns had improved, and we showed that this was probably due to an effect on the SCN; at night secretion of the sleep hormone, melatonin, which is also under the control of the SCN, can be inhibited by just 15 minutes of blue light ie blue light can reset the SCN rhythms to improve sleeping. Overlays are similar to the aforementioned tinted glasses. They come in a variety of colours to suit the personal preferences of each individual.