Vision Therapy

What is Vision Therapy?

Vision therapy is an individually prescribed therapy program to treat various functional vision issues that cannot be addressed with glasses or surgery. The goal of vision therapy is to strengthen the brain’s ability to control the visual system, which includes visual skills and visual information processing skills. Visual skills, such as eye teaming, eye focusing, eye movement, and eye-hand coordination are essential for the eyes to effectively take in visual information. Visual information processing is a critical part of vision representing how the brain interprets visual information received.

How can Vision Therapy help?

As approximately 80% of learning is done visually, a strong visual system is critical in achieving good academic performance, especially in children. Vision therapy can enhance these skills, and uses equipment including therapeutic lenses, prisms, polarized 3D targets, and anaglyphic 3D targets. Vision therapy can address many functional vision conditions, including:

Strabismus (crossed eye or wandering eye)
Amblyopia (lazy eye)
Convergence insufficiency (cross eye teaming issue)
Other Binocular dysfunction (eye teaming issue)
Accommodative dysfunction (eye focusing issue)
Oculomotor dysfunction (eye movement issue)
Learning-related vision problems
Post-concussion vision problems

What are some symptoms of binocular vision dysfunction?

There are many symptoms of binocular vision dysfunction that can interfere with your ability to function at home, school, or work on a day-to-day basis, including:

- Blurry vision
- Difficulty or tiredness with reading
- Reduced reading comprehension or fluency
- Skips words or misses lines while reading
- Uses fingers or rulers when reading
- Avoids close work
- Sees haloes or glare at night
- Light sensitivity
- Attention difficulties or loss of concentration

Eye strain
Headaches or migraines
Tilts head
Aches in neck and/or shoulder and back pain
Moves to one side when walking
Knocks into things when walking or falls often
Dizzy spells or feels faint
Motion sickness or nausea
Poor eye-hand coordination

Do you think you or your child might be affected by binocular vision issues? Take our symptom survey!

Is your child having difficulty with reading, learning, and/or paying attention at school?

Here's how to get started with Vision Therapy:

Eye Exam: Patients must start with a comprehensive eye examination to rule out other visual diagnoses. If you have not had a recent eye exam, we are happy to provide one to help assess whether Vision Therapy may be right for you. If you have already had an exam or have a referral from another optometrist, please send us the referral and exam results or contact us to arrange to get your results.
Visual Skills Assessment: If you are determined to be a potential candidate for Vision Therapy, the next step is to schedule a Visual Skills Assessment, which is a detailed evaluation of various visual skills including ocular motility, accommodative skills, vergence and binocular vision, and vision development and perception. The assessment will help determine visual conditions, symptoms, and potential treatment methods, as well as to rule out other vision-related causes of symptoms or learning difficulties.
Visual Information Processing Assessment (if necessary): Based on the results of the Visual Skills Assessment, an additional Visual Information Processing Assessment may be necessary to further evaluate processing functions including visual discrimination, visual memory, and visual-spatial relationships.
Vision Therapy: Based on the assessments we will recommend whether any visual diagnoses may be improved through our Vision Therapy services or other treatments. Vision Therapy programs are individually designed based on the identified conditions. Programs include weekly 1-hour sessions with our Vision Therapists, along with prescribed daily home exercises (~30-40 minutes). Similar to other therapies, vision therapy is a gradual process that requires dedication to the program from both the supervising professionals and the patients.

Dr. Kelly (Sung Hee) Lee is a residency-trained optometrist in vision therapy, vision rehabilitation, and pediatrics. As a patient’s visual skills develop through vision therapy, their corresponding academic performance is expected to improve.

Schedule a Vision Therapy Assessment today!

Contact our staff for more information. If you need a Comprehensive Eye Examination first, you can conveniently book online!