Common Signs and Symptoms
of Visual Deficiencies:
- Blurred or double vision when reading
- Skipping or repeating lines/words while reading
- One eye turning in or out
- Reading below expected grade level
- Difficulty copying from the chalkboard
- Headaches or dizziness after near activities
- Head tilting, closing or blocking one eye
- Poor hand-eye coordination
- Difficulty with handwriting
- Poor/inconsistent performance in sports
- Performing below potential in school
What is Vision Therapy?
Vision Therapy is an individualized treatment program designed to remediate visual-motor and/or perceptual-cognitive deficiencies. Vision Therapy retrains the eyes and brain to work together.
Wexford Academy utilizes integrated visual learning techniques, which blends traditional behavioral optometry into the field of education. By training the entire visual system which includes the eyes, brain and body, we can help you or your child become a more efficient learner.
During Vision Therapy, a vision therapist works with the patient through a series of exercises to build new skills. The goal of vision therapy is to train the patient's brain to use the eyes to receive information effectively, comprehend it quickly, and react appropriately.
There is more to healthy vision than meets the eye. Most people believe that good vision means simply having 20/20 acuity, or seeing clearly in the distance. However, vision is the brain and eyes working together. Vision has a tremendous impact on the learning process for both children and adults.
Visual Skills Needed for Learning:
- Tracking skills: The ability of the eyes to simultaneously and smoothly follow words on a page or follow moving objects in space.
- Eye teaming: The ability of both eyes to point at the same object at the same time. To learn more about Binocular Vision, visit these webpages: 3D Vision and Depth Perception
- Focusing: The ability to look quickly from distance to near or near to distance without experiencing blurry vision.
- Perceptual skills: Visual memory, visual discrimination, spatial organization, visual closure, visual/auditory integration, visual motor integration, directionality, visual capture, and visualization are all perceptual skills.
Vision Therapy
Nearly 80% of what we perceive, comprehend, and remember
depends on the efficiency of our visual system.
Wexford Academy's Vision Therapy department is dedicated to
helping children and adults develop the ability to process
information visually.
How Vision Affects Learning
How the brain and eyes work together – vision – has a great impact on the learning process for both children and adults. Imagine sitting in a classroom taking notes and fighting a focusing problem that will not allow you to change your focus from near to far and back again quickly enough to keep up with the instructor. Many symptoms of visual disorders mimic symptoms of dyslexia, ADD and ADHD and other learning disabilities. Many children and adults carrying these labels really have functional vision problems.
The person having the vision problem more than likely sees 20/20 either with or without corrective lenses. Most school screenings check for visual acuity alone and do not screen for visual skills including tracking, focusing, eye teaming or perceptual skills. Many children
Integrated Visual Learning
Wexford Academy is proud to be one of the few vision therapy offices in the world that offers Integrated Visual Learning (IVL). IVL is a program developed over 15 years by a behavioral/developmental optometrist, a psychologist, and an educator. It has been proven to be effective in charter schools that consistently have the best reading, math, and other grad-standard scores in their states.
- IVL is vision therapy with a cognitive finish. Instead of just giving the clients the visual abilities to learn, we train them how to use their visual systems to learn.
- IVL trains clients to become better in reading, spelling, doing math problems, studying, and writing creatively using their visual systems which is how successful students perform academic tasks. It also teaches them much needed life skills such as organization, concentration, attention, and goal-setting.
Quality Vision Therapy Programs
- The doctors and therapists at Wexford Academy have studied with multiple top researchers and practitioners in the field of vision therapy. Because of this, they have been able to put together quality vision therapy programs utilizing the best of what these professionals have to offer.
- At Wexford Academy, we conduct one-on-one therapy sessions to meet the unique needs of all the clients in our programs. In addition their program is monitored with timely progress evaluations by the doctor.
- Unlike many vision therapy programs, we treat the whole person rather than just the eyes. We have found that the key to good results in vision therapy is the timely use of visual-motor activities, peripheral awareness and expansion, as well as visualization procedures that teach the client to use their visual system in the most efficient and effective way possible.
- We conduct vision therapy programs which treat learning-related visual problems, strabismus (eye turn) and/or amblyopia (lazy eye), and brain injuries which affect visual functions.
110 VIP Drive Suite 101 Wexford, PA 15090 Phone: (724) 799-8313
(PDF File)
Wexford Academy
Vision Therapy and Learning Center
