In the featured image of the same book page with 4 different colours of overlay on it, April Slocombe, the author of this blog post who has autism rather than dyslexia, thinks the most effective colours are yellow and blue because she thinks they are the brightest colours that make the text stand out more.
Its purpose is to act as a reading aid for those with visual stress and learning difficulties. These coloured overlays come in a range of colours including purple, blue, yellow, pink, orange, green and grey. This is a popular learning support resource with many benefits including: Supporting the speed of reading.
Use cream or a soft pastel colour. Some dyslexic people will have their own colour preference. When printing, use matt paper rather than gloss. Paper should be thick enough to prevent the other side showing through.
Despite the research suggesting colored overlays is not an effective treatment for dyslexia, colored overlays continue to be used as an intervention to improve reading skills of individuals with dyslexia.
We have shown that simple treatments such as viewing text through blue or yellow coloured filters, musical training or eating oily fish, really can help children to learn to read.
Do the words appear to move, wobble or flicker or can you see strange patterns in the words? If you experience any of these symptoms, try each of the overlay colours in turn and see if the symptoms are reduced by any particular colour. Narrow down your choice to one overlay colour.
- Background colors have an impact on the readability of text for people with and without dyslexia, and the impact is comparable for both groups. - Warm background colors such as Peach, Orange, or Yellow are beneficial for readability taking into con sideration both reading performance and mouse dis tance.
Irlen: Irlen lenses, also known as Irlen Spectral Filters, are coloured overlays or lenses that aim to reduce perceptual distortions and visual stress experienced by some people with dyslexia.
Colored overlays are designed to help alleviate reading disabilities caused by visual processing disorders by emphasizing text and giving an illusion that the text is on a colored background. They work by changing each color's wavelength, revising how fast signals are sent from the eye to the brain.
Are blue overlays helpful? Coloured overlays are usually helpful to a student when they are experiencing visual stress. You can usually identify visual stress in relation to reading when reading is slower, inefficient and erroneous.
In terms of performance, the color pairs read by people with dislexia were (ordered from the fastest to the slowest): black & creme; blue & yellow; dark brown & light green, brown & dark green, black & white; off-black & off-white; blue & white and black & yellow.
For people with dyslexia, total contrast — white text on a black background, or vice-versa — can be difficult to read. Many dark themes use total contrast.
Coloured overlays reduce the perceptual distortions of text that children sometimes describe. They enable some children to read text more fluently and with less discomfort and fewer headaches. It is important to assess the effects of a wide range of colours because individuals do not all benefit from the same colour.
Red is the colour of dyslexia awareness.
Learning Disabilities, Dyslexia and Vision
Scientific evidence shows that behavioural optometry treatments such as eye tracking exercises, vision therapy, weak glasses to relax the focus, and coloured lenses/overlays do not help children read any better.
Most will have a preferred paper colour, which may not be yellow. Users with dyslexia, other specific learning difficulties or visual impairments are most likely to find materials printed onto coloured paper helpful. It is an erroneous belief that yellow paper benefits all individuals with dyslexia.
Incorporate Multisensory Learning
Multisensory learning aims to incorporate tactile and kinesthetic activities into the learning process as well. This gives students with dyslexia more ways to understand, remember, and recall new information.
"Tinted lenses and filters have been suggested to treat visual perceptual dysfunctions that lead to visual distortion caused by sensitivities to particular wavelengths of light but not to treat language-based dyslexia.
The use of a correctly coloured overlay can make it easier to see the print and therefore, increase the reading speed and comprehension for many children and adults. It can make reading a far more pleasurable experience and eliminate headaches and migraines (see below).
The 4 types of dyslexia include phonological dyslexia, surface dyslexia, rapid naming deficit, and double deficit dyslexia. Dyslexia is a learning disorder where the person often has difficulty reading and interpreting what they read.
Dyslexie font is a typeface – specially designed for people with dyslexia – which enhances the ease of reading and comprehension. Want to discover it for yourself? Get started immediately after registration. Sign up for the free to use products or become a Dyslexie font “lifetime” member.
Studies have found that students with dyslexia may benefit from using different color paper or paper overlays because it reduces stress on the eyes.
Taken together, these results suggested that the green filter improved reading performance in children with dyslexia because the filter most likely facilitated cortical activity and decreased visual distortions.
White backgrounds: Simple and classic, black text on a white background provides the highest readability ratio. Blues and grays also provide the right contrast and thus work well on white backgrounds. However, avoid using white backgrounds for an entire webpage, which can strain the eyes.
Irlen Overlays are the original coloured overlay technology and the first step to addressing reading difficulties. Irlen's 9" x 12" (bigger than A4) coloured acetate overlays can be placed over printed materials to determine whether reading is made easier.