BEING PART OF THE IRLEN JOURNEY

Wanting to help others

Twenty-six years ago I was introduced to Irlen Syndrome. I was learning about
screening people for Irlen Syndrome as professional development. At the time I had a
tutoring business so I was looking for other tools that might help students. I knew that
the colour overlays and coloured lenses helped one in ten people to read better but I
didn’t understand how this worked.
When I was learning how to screen people for Irlen Syndrome I discovered some of
the tasks I had to look at were not easy to keep looking at!
What a relief it was to find an Irlen overlay helped me and to come to the realisation
that Irlen wasn’t just about people finding it hard to read actual words – but for some
like me – it helped me to concentrate on print and took away the glare of white
background. Fantastic – I could read much faster too, I thought I was just a
methodical /slower reader!

How could I use the Irlen screening test to help my students?

Many of the students I knew who found school difficult, didn’t fit the normal difficulties
of just not knowing letter/sounds and maths concepts. Some students were classed
as ‘capable student who needs to try harder’ or ‘needs to concentrate more’ or ‘is
lazy’. It was with these students I decided to do my first Irlen screening.

Connecting the dots: Irlen Syndrome a Piece of the Puzzle

Wow! So many times I was blown away and still am today! Many of these students
had headaches, poor spelling, poor handwriting, difficulties reading aloud, avoids
reading, words move, needs to read in very low light…and many more symptoms that
you may discover with a simple test found either on my website readeasy.co.nz or by
visiting an Irlen Clinic.
What these students and myself found was that this would change lives as the
coloured overlays and the Irlen coloured lenses would do more than just help people
to read.

Jacqui