What is Visual Stress?

Visual Stress is a perceptual processing condition. It is linked to dyslexia and similar visual learning difficulties. Visual Stress is also known as Meares-Irlen syndrome, after the two researchers who first discovered the connection between white page glare and reading difficulties. 

What are the symptoms? 

Some people experience visual discomfort or disturbance when they read. Common symptoms that may significantly impair reading ability, or make reading very tiring, include:


  • headaches and eyestrain associated with reading and/or other near work
  • text appearing blurred or going in and out of focus
  • text appearing double or alternating between single and double
  • difficulty keeping place in text
  • difficulty tracking across lines of text
  • skipping words or lines
  • discomfort with brightness of the page or contrast between text and background
  • text that appears to shimmer or flicker
  • glare sensitivity


These can vastly impact on quality of learning where most children struggle to read. Early identification and treatment is important in the mental development and well-being of affected children.

Some useful questions to ask your child:

Do the letters stay still or move on the page?

Does the page look too bright or just right?

Does it hurt your eyes to look at the page?

What can be done to help?

As this problem is perceptual, rather than visual, standard prescription glasses cannot help. Many people who complain of visual stress have found specialist coloured reading ruler or overlay placed over the page can reduce glare. 

Lenses help to filter the light-waves entering the brain, and therefore it does not have to work as hard, so it calms. This can alleviate many of the symptoms, if not all, in some cases. Filters help to make reading easier, faster, for longer whilst feeling less tired and understanding more of what they have read.


It is important to note that different people prefer different colours. We can help find the right colour as well as recommend the correct coloured glasses or overlays. This should then be reassessed on a yearly basis or when the symptoms seem to be returning.