Each week we will be sharing a tip from our school psychologist, Mrs. Rollins.

This week we are talking about – Do Colored Overlays fix Dyslexia?

The short answer is no, but I will provide some more information into why people think it does despite research indicating that it does not. I will also go over where the idea came from and what the research says.

The main proponent of colored overlays for reading improvement is an American Psychologist named Helen Irlen. In 1983 she wrote a paper in which she described a condition called scotopic sensitivity which caused people to have visual perceptual processing errors. She believed that colored overlays retimed the visual signals which then improves the individual’s reading difficulties.

Research shows that the brain does respond differently when reading with a colored overlay. But a study done by the American Association of Pediatrics said that colored overlays do not produce any immediate benefit for a child with reading difficulties. Helen Irlen agreed in a rebuttal by saying that the overlays allow the child to better perceive the text, but they would still need to put the work in to fix reading errors.

The fundamental problem is that while colored overlays may help with a visual processing or perception problem, dyslexia is actually a disorder related to the language centers of the brain. These are two different things entirely. A person with dyslexia might find colored overlays helpful in making reading more visually pleasing, but it does not cure their dyslexia.

This makes sense because if a person’s dyslexia is, for example, primarily a problem of understanding how a sound in a word is related to a letter or cluster of letters in a word, then being able to visually see the word a little better is not going to wholly solve that issue. They still need to build up the automatic response of seeing the letter and thinking or saying the correct sound.

But even the claim of it helping the visual perception of a reader is challenged by the American Optometric Association. In 2004, they released a statement that they believed that underlying symptoms of Irlen syndrome or scotopic sensitivity syndrome were related to identifiable vision anomalies and could be treated through vision therapy to the point that the individual no longer needs to use colored overlays.

So colored overlays can make reading a more pleasant experience and maybe make someone want to read more, which could lead to gains in reading ability. However, if you or your child have reading problems related to the language centers in the brain, like with dyslexia, then colored overlays aren’t going to make a significant difference with that particular issue.

If this is a topic that interests you, more information can be found in the National Library of Medicine as well as from the American Academy of Pediatrics.

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