All Children and Adults Need These Visual Skills. 
Not All Of Us Have Them

Many different visual skills are involved in our learning – we must learn to understand what’s going on around us in order to understand where we fit into things. Understanding and perception are the keys, and vision plays a major part in clear understanding and accurate perception.

We must first learn to read so that, later, we can read to learn. Similarly, the visual skills listed below are needed if youngsters and adults are to succeed in school and in life. We specialize in the treatment and enhancement of these vision skills. For further information please visit www.acbo.org.au on the internet.

Clearness of vision  (acuity):
The ability to see clearly near/far. Clarity at distance is about the only skill that the usual (Snellen) eye chart examination tests and tells whether you have 20/20 acuity or you don’t. Generally, people who have poor distance acuity are nearsighted- that is, do well at reading, less well at sports. The farsighted person tends to have more difficulty reading but often does better at sports than the nearsighted person.

Eye movement skills (fixation ability):
The ability to point the eyes accurately at an object and to keep the eyes on target whether the object is moving or stationary. Without these skills:  you can’t clearly follow a moving object, such as a ball in flight; You can’t move your eyes smoothly across a line of text on a page; You can’t shift the eyes from a close object to a far one, such as from a notebook to a chalkboard in class.

Eye focusing skills (accommodation):
The ability to adjust the focus of the eyes at the distance from the object varies. Copying from the board requires constant shifting of focus from far to near and back again. High level automatic reading for meaning requires the ability for efficient, minimum demand maintenance of focus. Most people are capable of a large amount of change of focus, but fine, accurate control breaks down more easily under stress. Excellent eye focusing is a skill common to superior athletes.

Eye aiming skills (converging and diverging):
The ability to turn the eyes inward or outward in looking from objects close up to objects far away. These skills must be closely coordinated with eye focusing skills. Inadequacies in these areas seriously hamper reading ability and athletic performance.

Eye teaming skills (binocular fusion):
The ability to coordinate and align the eyes precisely so that the brain can fuse the input it receives from each eye.

Even slight misalignment can cause double vision which in turn the brain may try to eliminate by suppressing the use of one eye. The brain will react in a disturbed and defensive manner to confusing signals from the eyes.

Eye-hand coordination:
The ability of the vision system (eye-brain communication) to coordinate the information received through the eyes in order to monitor and direct the hands. This skill is important for learning to write (poor handwriting is often related to poor eye-hand coordination). It is essential to good performance in most sports.

Visual form perception:
The ability to organise images on the printed page into letters/words. It is an important skill used in learning to read and is developed through both experience and practise. It can be taught or improved.