It is nearly 20 years since Anne (my wife) and I designed and patented the Eye Level Reading Ruler. At the time, the provision of coloured overlay interventions for visual stress was pretty much the exclusive domain of the optometry profession and the Irlen® Centres. Most schools knew nothing of visual stress and assumed that visual disturbances like reversals and white “rivers” on the page were symptoms of dyslexia. As an SEN teacher myself in the late 1980s (we didn’t call it SEND in those days) I was handed a red coloured overlay “to try with my dyslexic students,” and very quickly dismissed it as snake oil when it didn’t make a difference for the boy I tried it with. Such was my understanding – and that of most of my peers – at the time.
Pushing the Boat Out
That all changed in about 2002 when we looked again at the idea of coloured overlays and thought about how we could employ their benefits in something smaller and more user-friendly than a transparent sheet that covered the whole page. We spoke to the SENCO at a well-known specialist dyslexia school and came up with the idea of dividing a much smaller strip into a narrow edge (for line tracking) and a broad pane (for reading into the paragraph). And so the Eye Level Reading Ruler was born. We met with Prof Arnold Wilkins, head of visual science at Essex university and author of Reading Through Colour (Wiley 2003) to gain a deeper understanding of the science behind the effectiveness of coloured overlays, and eventually pushed the boat out (the boat wasn’t very big in those days) to launch our range of ten colours that covered the full chromaticity of the spectrum, basing our selection on his research.
SEN Product of the Year
At the time, Crossbow Education was known as a supplier of innovative multisensory games, materials and activity books (many of which came out of my own work teaching dyslexic students), but the reading rulers soon became our best-selling product. The visual disturbances (generically called “pattern glare”) often associated with dyslexia are actually caused by visual stress, a separate condition of the visual cortex that is often co-morbid with dyslexia and other SpLDs, and that is brought about by an over-sensitivity to specific wavelengths of light. We began to concentrate our time and resources on developing more visual stress support products, and by the time we had added to the range with A4 coloured overlays, tinted exercise books, our own Visual Stress Assessment Pack, our tinted magnetic marker boards, and more recently our Tint and Track computer app, we were better known for our visual stress support products than the multisensory teaching resources that we started out with. Before long, visual stress was on the radar of most SENCOs thanks to the availability of our inexpensive little reading rulers. Hundreds of schools discovered that they could buy our Visual Stress Assessment Pack for £50.00 to find out for themselves if struggling readers needed an overlay, and more specifically which colour could help, instead of paying more than that, per student, for an outside professional to come in and do the work. In 2014 Crossbow won the prestigious SEN Product of the Year award at the BESA (British Educational Suppliers’ Assn) Educational Resources Awards for our visual stress support resources. Two years later we won the international SEN Supplier of the Year award at the GESS (Gulf Educational Supplies and Services) exhibition in Dubai.
Arguments and problems
Meanwhile, some academics and professionals argued about the efficacy of the use of coloured overlays and reading rulers. Were they just a placebo? Was the design of the research flawed? How valid, scientifically, is the growing body of anecdotal evidence that surrounds the experience of reading through colour? Despite many peer-reviewed studies (including one that used our own products) there were, and still are, many sceptics. And indeed, a genuine problem can be over-reliance on a quick assessment to identify visual stress: improved reading performance with a coloured overlay can occasionally be masking more serious health problems, for example, which is why our literature always recommends that an eyecare professional is also consulted when difficulties with vision are presenting. In addition, the fact that a coloured overlay may improve a child’s reading speed and comprehension doesn’t preclude the possibility of dyslexia (or another difficulty) also having an affect on a child’s performance. Visual Stress often exists alongside dyslexia, but that means that there are two problems to contend with, not just one. Reducing or removing pattern glare with a coloured overlay or reading ruler doesn’t treat the dyslexia: it just makes the words accessible so that the dyslexic child can start learning to decode them.
Is that what you mean by a word?
Fortunately, the positive results of reading through (and, incidentally, writing on) colour seem to have a stronger dynamic than the negatives of the naysayers. I wouldn’t like to say how many times we have had stories of, or from, people young and old telling us how lives have been changed by a simple tinted transparency. These reports may pass under the radar of science, but they are no less true for the people who tell them. We have seen with our own eyes the differences between both the handwriting and the spelling of a child’s work on white paper and on paper of her optimum colour. I have had the privilege of presenting on visual stress at many events in the UK and overseas, and the story that still gives me goose-bumps when I tell it is of the 11 year old boy, a non-reader, whose comment on being given the right coloured overlay to read through after being assessed with our pack (in his case, a double sky blue: he needed a particularly dark tint) was “Is THAT what you mean by a word? Can I start learning to read now?”
The Ripple Effect.
In the last twenty years (nearly) Anne and I have seen our little strips of tinted plastic go round the world, and in that time, especially in the last few years, hundreds of thousands of children (and adults) – maybe more – have benefitted from our design. Not all of these reading rulers have been manufactured and supplied by ourselves, but we take pride in the fact that not only has our contribution made a difference in the world of literacy, but the ripple effect of those who followed where we have led has extended it a lot further.
When we met with Arnold Wilkins all those years ago his passion was that an understanding of the beneficial effects of reading through colour would reach beyond the small group of professionals that were aware of visual stress at the time, and out to the wider reading public. I think we have gone a long way towards helping achieve that. With each new annual intake the journey begins afresh, so we never rest on our laurels, and we have some exciting additions to our range that we will be launching in 2024. So here’s to the next 20 years: watch this space!
Bob Hext November 2023
Crossbow Education's Blog 