I have Irlen lenses for Scotopic Sensitivity Syndrome. I have had them for about 10 years. the moment I found out about it and tried someone else's glasses I felt a huge sense of relief and didn't want to hand the glasses back. I immediately made an appointment with the Special Education Centre at the local Uni, was tested, found to have the SSS and was tested for the right colour for me. My colour is sort of a beige/maroon mix (but I get a tinge of purple in mine because I love purple). I have also changed the background colour on my computers at home and at work to make it more like the colour in my glasses. Without the glasses I get a shadowy haze around the words, and they jiggle about on the page. I still get the haze and jiggle with the glasses but it is very much reduced. My background colour on my computer, i.e. the "page" colour I have set for Word etc, is RGB: 239, 228, 237. As I said, it's a muted beige/maroon/mauve.

The first lens colour that the assessor told me to try was yellow. I baulked and told him I don't like yellow. He made me try it anyway, but then he said that one of the common things among SSS people is that we don't like yellow, because of the glare.

Em, high contrast between paper and print makes the print hazy and makes it jiggle for me.

As for font, I love Comic Sans, but Arial is clear. Times New Roman is a little bit more of a problem but better than some fonts.If you look at the shape of the letters in Times NR, the letters like 'a', 'e', 'o', and 's', etc are roughly circular shape, and the letters are compact, so harder to see the difference in shape. There is a lot of white space within the letters of Comic Sans, Arial and Verdana. Comic Sans also has an 'a' and a 't' like the font used when we first learned to read.

I get a muted white background on the Faldingworth site. No colour at all. I tried it in Firefox and IE. Maybe you changed it, and I'm still trawling through the thread catching up from last night.

I have trouble reading this page because the safety yellow radiates glare

Fluorescent lights are hell. I was reluctant to admit to my dyslexia and SSS when I started in my job a few years ago, but it has worked out well that I did. I was moved to a desk which has a window with neutral coloured venetian blinds and I can adjust the blinds according to the time of day so that there is never too much glare. The natural light counteracts the fluoro lights, and every second fluoro tube is turned off in that section because a few people had problems with glare from 3 sides of windows, so it is ideal for me. If they ever tell me to move from that desk I'll be kicking and screaming. Prior to that I was sitting in a corner of a big room, as far from the windows you could get, with glaring fluoro lights on all sides.

Jack Campin,

I started getting visual migraines a couple of months ago (like I need another visual problem, no way!). Do a Google Image search on visual migraines for different people's artistic impressions of how visual migraines manifest.vHeat haze effects is one of them. I read up on visual migraines on the internet and found that electrolytes, like Staminade (see my post above about that word) help to sort the visual migraines out. Worth a try. I use Staminade powder. It's cheaper than buying the made-up drinks and it has no sugar, although it does have an artificial sweetener. I get it from the supermarket.

I've been reading the thread and writing as I go, so this post might be a bit disjointed.

Thanks, heaps, for a great thread.
Helen