Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a serious neuro developmental disorder that impairs a child's ability to communicate and interact with others. It also includes restricted repetitive behaviors, interests and activities.
Dyslexia is defined as a learning difficulty that affects the literacy skills, such as writing, reading, and spelling. Those who are diagnosed with dyslexia often finds it difficult to hear a word and break it down into separate sounds to associate to each sound and letter that make up the word. Though, aside from that, people with dyslexia also struggle in other areas, such as the ability to concentrate, short-term memory, personal organization, time management, and the ability to differentiate left from right. Dyslexia is not the same as Irlen syndrome.
Overlays – Coloured plastic A4 sheet or sheets that cover white paper to help the distortion.
Filters/ lenses/ tints/ coloured lenses, the name given to the tinted coloured irlen lenses worn in spectacle frames.
Practitioner / Diagnostician – the Irlen specialist, highly trained to both screen and carry out full assessment for Irlen filters. This will NOT be an optician. Check www.irlen.com. These are the diagnosticians.
Screener - a person trained using the Irlen method to carry out the first stage of the process giving a report, findings during the screening, advice and establishing the overlay colour needed
Assessment – this is a testing in two parts the screening then the lens evaluation
Distortion- this can be movement, flashing, going blurry or changing
Depth perception- being able to judge how far away something really is
Hyper-mobility The joint hyper-mobility syndrome is a condition that features joints that easily move beyond the normal range expected for that particular joint.
Dyspraxia – a developmental disorder of the brain in childhood causing difficulty in activities requiring coordination and movement this condition makes you appear accident prone or clumsy
Environment - what we see around us.
Light sensitivity- finding the light to difficult to be comfortable with.
Pre-screening - a preliminary testing carried out by a screener to check whether a full screening is needed.