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Published: 25 November 2013

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Dr Kerry Hempenstall, Senior Industry Fellow, School of Education, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia.

First published Nov 15, 2013. Updated 28/10/2017

My blogs can be viewed on-line or downloaded as a Word file or PDF at https://www.dropbox.com/sh/olxpifutwcgvg8j/AABU8YNr4ZxiXPXzvHrrirR8a?dl=0

It sounds like a no brainer. You need vision to read. If reading isn’t happening, surely it could be a vision problem? In like vein, you need a hand to write. However, if you can’t write, is it necessarily a hand problem? Well, neither conclusion necessarily follows. Perhaps you’ve simply never been taught to write, or you have some disability, such as a significant intellectual disability. So, a hand is a necessary condition for handwriting, but it is not a sufficient condition. Similarly, vision may be a necessary condition for reading, but it is not a sufficient condition. If there is a problem with reading, it sounds at least plausible that vision may be the source of the problem. Indeed, extreme levels of visual disability can preclude conventional reading. But, what about those struggling with reading whose visual problems are adequately corrected with optometric lenses and those whose corrected vision is considered within the normal range by optometric assessment? Could there be some other vision problem not assessed or detected by conventional optometry?

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