Profile of peripheral visual anomalies in the disabled reader

A vision screening was performed on 80 disabled readers. The purpose of this screening was to examine the incidence of specific peripheral visual anomalies so as to isolate those visual anomalies most commonly found in this population, thus forming a visual profile of the disabled reader. The results of this vision screening indicate the same basic visual profile found by numerous other investigators; i.e., a significantly higher percentage of failures in tests of accommodation, fusion, and oculomotor skills relative to visual acuity, refractive error and ocular pathology, as well as the need for a more comprehensive vision screening to detect those vision problems known to most commonly exist in the disabled reader. It is important to note that the implications of this investigation would indeed be broadened if comparison tests were similarly administered to a population of non-disabled readers. Comparison studies by other investigators are therefore provided among the references to acquaint the reader with the specific differences in incidence of peripheral visual anomalies found when comparing disabled and normal readers.