The Visual Process

Anita Murray Hill from the Visual Process came to speak to Harbourside Rotary about her personal experience with her daughter who has Binocular Vision Dysfunction.  

 

Anita is a business person who has become involved in promoting vision issues for children because of her daughter's experience.  Her daughter had experienced as a child reversing letters to the point of completing full pages of letters completely in a mirror image.  However, she had her eye's checked every year by a doctor and had perfect 20/20 vision according to the optometrist.  That is because a typical eye exam is checking for acuity and eye health, not for efficiency of the eye.

 

As Anita's daughter grew up she clearly was battling with something but no one could find the cause of he issue.  She would say things like "the wall just jumped out at me", or "I can't see the black letters on the white board".  She found that although she wanted to read, she couldn't focus so required to close one eye when she would read, which was unusual.

 

After pushing back to the optometrist, Anita was able to get her daughter a test called the Readilizer, which tracks the eye movements using special goggles.   It finally was able to see that her eyes were not working together and were causing her great distress.

 

After 35 weeks of vision therapy sessions, Anita's daughter was making great progress.  Today, she is in the Mt Doug Challenge Program and loves math.

 

Working with the Visual Process, Anita is raising funds to purchase a mobile unit to go around to schools to assist with diagnosis for children.  Amazingly, eye issues are a huge contributor to children with learning disabilities.  This is fully preventable and just needs to get the right kids diagnosed.

 

The Drs of Optometry have issued a checklist to help parents watch for the signs, many of which Anita's daughter had.  Please take the hand out and help pay attention to children around you for these signs.