Low Vision Affects the Reading Process Quantitatively But Not Qualitatively

In The Netherlands, children are considered visually impaired, and therefore eligible for institutional support, if their functional vision is less than 3/10 and/or their visual field is less than 30 degrees. If the visual impairment is such that the child is unable to read print and must resort to Braille, he or she is considered to be blind. If, despite a reduced acuity or limited visual field, the visual impairment is such that the child is still able to read print, he or she is considered to have low vision. Children who have low vision but sufficient residual vision to read print are the focus of this study. A substantial amount of research has indicated that the reading development of children with low vision lags behind that of children with normal vision (e.g., Daugherty, 1977; Fellenius, 1999; Gompel, van Bon, Schreuder, & Adriaansen, 2002). Despite a similar level of intelligence and equal education, children with low vision generally do not succeed in attaining the same reading speed as their peers with normal vision (but see Fridal, Jansen, & Klindt, 1981). Several explanations have been put forward for the relatively slow reading speed of children with low vision. Generally, these explanations pertain to the potential problems that readers with low vision encounter when extracting visual information from a page or a computer screen. One important explanation for the slow reading speed of children with low vision concerns the ease with which text can be fixated. During reading, the eyes do not slide evenly over the paper, but longer breaks (fixations, varying from 200– 250 ms) are alternated with relatively short eye movements (saccades, varying from 20–35 ms). The main function of a Low Vision Affects the Reading Process Quantitatively But Not Qualitatively