Joshua loved school and he particularly enjoyed learning about history, languages and maths. He was able to confidently stand up in front of the class and present on a topic. However, when he was asked to copy from the whiteboard or read from a book, he struggled, lost his place and got upset at the bright lights flashing at him from the page.
As time went on, Joshua started to like school a bit less. He could see his twin sister able to do things which, with his best will, he could not do, such as read confidently, copy the teacher’s writing from the whiteboard, catch a ball in the playground. Joshua’s confidence became severely affected, so much so that going to school became a struggle for him.
When he was called lazy by his teacher, his parents knew there was a barrier which was preventing Joshua from learning and persuaded the school to have Joshua assessed for dyslexia.
This was the beginning of Joshua’s journey of discovery, which culminated in a privately-funded assessment with an Irlen Diagnostician.
“When the Diagnostician gave me these lenses to put in front of my eyes, I saw for the first time the words in the book in front of me – they were not jumping around the page or fading away, I couldn’t see the bright strips of white on the page or the bright pink flashing lights, which used to really hurt my eyes” explained Joshua. “But the best thing of all was that when I looked at my mum’s face, it was not distorted and scary like I had always seen it. It was nice, smiling and for the first time, it wasn’t green, but a normal colour”.
Since wearing his Irlen Spectral Filters, Joshua has not looked back once. He has become a confident reader and has caught up with his twin sister.
Joshua has been working with his school to raise awareness of Irlen Syndrome and has spoken at school assemblies about his “cool glasses” to help other kids know that, if words, walls and floors move, all they have to do is speak up and they can be helped too.