What are coloured lenses and overlays really for?

30 January 2020
Winter 2020

Adrian O’Dowd examines the latest opinions and research and asks what approach optometrists should take.

Use of coloured lenses, or overlays, has been linked to helping people read for 200 years, but remains controversial because of a lack of robust evidence for its effectiveness (Evans and Allen, 2016). 

Jim Gilchrist FCOptom, co-author of guidance for the Specific Learning Difficulties Assessment Standards Committee and former Head of Optometry and Vision Science at the University of Bradford, says: “There has long been this idea, in many people’s minds, that coloured lenses and dyslexia go handin hand. It’s a fundamentally wrong idea, because coloured lenses in this context are intended to alleviate visual stress not dyslexia, and most people with dyslexia do not have visual stress. 

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