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Studies in adults with glaucoma have shown that they suffer with slower reading speeds when reading silently for long periods and are more likely to see the speed decrease further as a result of possible reading fatigue.
A new study has reported that better strategies are needed to help such patients. With advancing technology that has now presented us with the likes of e-readers, and the many applications that are created for them, it is hoping they could provide a long term aid.
If the optimal format for reading in the context of glaucoma could be determined, it would be easy to create an application to present text in this manner as part of a commercial device such as an iPad or Kindle.
The article "Difficulty with Out-loud and Silent Reading in Glaucoma," reports that the sustained silent reading speed for glaucoma patients with bilateral Visual Field (VF) loss is significantly less than the speed associated with the patient reading aloud.
The study was conducted with two groups from the Wilmer Eye Institute: patients with bilateral VF loss from glaucoma and the control group made up of glaucoma suspect patients. Both groups were evaluated using two out-loud reading tests, a sustained silent reading test over a 30-minute period and a comprehension evaluation corresponding to the sustained silent reading material. The results reports an overall 16 percent slower reading speed for the glaucoma sufferers.
It also showed that the groups reading comprehension was lower than in the control group.