The Connection Between
Learning Difficulties and Vision

Considering 80% of the information students process comes through the visual system, vision can affect many school skills.

For example, a vision problem may make reading, writing, spelling or math feel harder.

At the start of the day, a student may read clearly. However, double vision can appear or get worse later.

Some people close or block one eye to avoid seeing double. As the visual system gets tired, reading may become more difficult.

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How Vision Supports Learning

Clear and comfortable vision helps children read, write and learn with less effort. However, some vision problems can make schoolwork feel harder.

Child reading with vision therapy support in Calgary

How Vision Affects Learning

Vision problems can affect learning in several ways. Below are the main areas where students may struggle.

Reading

Reading and reading comprehension are different skills. However, both depend on clear and comfortable vision.

Learning to Read

Early learning to Read

In early reading, clear vision helps students recognize letters and numbers.

However, a serious vision problem can make this harder. It may also affect memory for letters, numbers and word patterns.

Reading to Learns

As schoolwork becomes harder, students must read for longer periods.

However, blurry or double vision can make reading tiring. As a result, the student may avoid reading or understand less of the text.

How Vision Affects Comprehension

The visual system supports reading comprehension. If words look blurry or double, the child must work harder to keep them clear.

Therefore, less energy remains for understanding the message.

Why Decoding Can Feel Slow

Students with vision problems may spend too much effort decoding words.

Instead of reading smoothly, they may focus on each word. As a result, reading can feel slow and tiring.

Signs of Poor Eye Tracking

Poor eye tracking can make students use a finger to follow text. They may read slowly and lose their place.

In addition, they may repeat, skip, insert or change words. These signs may look like poor attention, but vision can be part of the problem.

How the Demo Shows Reading Effort

This demo shows how much effort a person may use with weak eye tracking.

Before reading can feel smooth, the eyes need accurate movement. Otherwise, reading may become slow and choppy.

In addition, comprehension can drop because the student uses too much energy to move the eyes.

Optometric vision therapy can help improve these visual skills. Then the child may feel more ready to learn.

Read more about eye tracking dysfunctions and how they impact a child’s ability to learn and to read.

Math

An important skill in math is to organize what is being written and the student may have trouble lining things up

Seeing Signs and Decimals

How Clear Vision Supports Math

If a student has difficulty seeing things as clear  and single, they may have trouble seeing decimals and/or signs. An important skill in math is to organize what is being written and the student may have trouble lining things up and keeping their place if their visual skills are poor.  This could be due to poor eye tracking or binocularity instability.

Understanding Left, Right and Direction

Laterality and directionality (concrete understanding of left and right and the ability to project those out into space) are also important concepts in math. If a student sees the orientation of numbers  incorrectly, they will have difficulty completing the problem.

How Visualization Helps With Numbers

Students who lack visualization skills can often be found counting on their fingers or verbalizing sequences. Given  enough time, they can generally compute an answer, but they tend to do poorly on timed tests. Awareness of numbers and what they mean as well as being able to visualize numbers and quantities, are critical to  success in math and can be impacted if a child has a vision problem.

Why Math Can Seem Easier

It should be noted that a child with vision  problems may do well in math but be a poor reader, primarily because  math doesn’t require as many precise eye movements as reading.

Spelling

Visual Recall and Spelling

Visual Recall and Spelling ability

Visual recall, the ability to create a visual  image based on past visual experience without currently having that  experience, is a visualization skill that is critical for spelling. In  spelling, it is the ability to create a mental image of a word without  being able to look at the word.

Writing

Writing involves both handwriting and composition skills.

Handwriting and Visual Guidance

How Vision Guides Handwriting

Writing involves both handwriting and composition  skills. It is necessary for vision to lead the hand for handwriting and  this can be very difficult if the student cannot see well. In fact,  often you can see in the handwriting where the student stopped looking  or became fatigued. Difficulty writing straight on a page is often a result of poor peripheral awareness.

Key Visual Skills for Handwriting

There are several vision-related skills that are critical to good handwriting that may be underdeveloped in a student with vision problems. Visualization is also important in handwriting because the student needs to remember what different words look like in order to reproduce them on the page. Spatial concepts are important in handwriting to know and plan how words will go together. Good laterality and directionality are important to differentiate similarly shaped letters in different orientations (e.g. b, d, p, q).

Organizing Ideas Before Writing

Visualization is also critical for writing composition because the student needs to be able to organize and re-organize the composition in his or her head.

See the College of Optometrists in Vision Development (COVD) resource on vision conditions. You can also download the related facts and figures PDF below.

College of Optometrists in Vision Development article

facts-and-figures-for-learning-related-vision-problems (pdf)

Download Pdf
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