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Some recent evidence from both clinical and empirical studies has suggested that some cases of reading disability might be helped by the use of Irlen tinted lenses. Clinical work has been carried out in two special education centres, at Sydney CAE and at Hunter Institute of Higher Education. Four hundred and sixty five clients from these centres, all of whom had reading problems, and who had worn Irlen lenses fora minimum of 12 months were surveyed to assess their evaluation of the usefulness of the lenses for a variety of literacy-related difficulties. Ninety three percent indicated a definite improvement in these difficulties. Largest improvements were reported in amount of effort required to read, fluency of reading, concentration, and comprehension. In each factorsurveyed, more than 50% of respondents indicated definite improvements, including handwriting, spelling, tiredness, and self-confidence. Telephone checks with non-respondents indicated that the results are probably reliable for the whole of the population surveyed.

A significant proportion of people with learning difficulties have social problems, which are often considered to be the product of school failure. However, a number of studies have suggested that these social skill problems may relate to the inability to decode subtle visual cues of body language and facial expression. The majority of studies of facial expression, however, have viewed learning disability as a unitary condition, without taking account of specific sub‐types which may have more difficulty in processing visual cues, especially for facial emotion. This study investigated children aged 8 to 12 years who were divided into three learning disability sub‐groups: 1) a visual‐perceptual sub‐type called Irlen Syndrome (n=41); 2) a group with learning disabilities, but no indications of Irlen Syndrome (n=30); and 3) a normally achieving control group (n=31). The Irlen Syndrome sub‐group had significantly lower scores for interpreting emotion from facial expression than the two other groups. The learning disabled non‐lrlen sub‐group also had significantly lower scores than the control group, but with much smaller levels of significance than those between the Irlen and control groups.

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