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Visual Skills Assessment in Lower Mission, Kelowna
If you or your child struggles with reading, focusing, eye coordination, or visual comfort, a Visual Skills Assessment can take a closer look at how your eyes function together.
The assessment evaluates visual skills beyond eyesight alone and helps determine whether additional care may be appropriate.
When Should You Consider a Visual Skills Assessment?
When Your Eyes Miss the Memo
A closer assessment may be helpful if you or your child experiences:
- Losing your place or skipping lines while reading
- Headaches or eyestrain during near work
- Double or fluctuating vision
- Difficulty maintaining focus during visual tasks
- Visual discomfort during reading or screen use
- Vision changes following a concussion or brain injury
These concerns can have different causes. A Visual Skills Assessment can help determine whether focusing, tracking, or eye coordination may be contributing.
How Your Eyes Work Together
Clear eyesight is only one part of vision. Your eyes also need to focus, move, and coordinate efficiently during activities such as reading, screen use, and changing focus between distances.
A Visual Skills Assessment examines these functions in greater detail.
What Is Being Evaluated During the Assessment?
We evaluate how your eyes focus, move, and coordinate, as well as how consistently they respond over time.
These measurements help us understand how your visual system is performing and identify where it may not be working as efficiently as it should.
When you look from a near object to a far object, your eyes automatically engage muscles to focus and maintain a clear image. Accommodative dysfunction is when the eyes adjust poorly, affecting comfort and visual quality.
Signs and symptoms of poor eye focusing can include:
- Blurry vision when shifting focus
- Poor posture to compensate for eye fatigue
- Tired or strained eyes
- Poor concentration or task avoidance
Depth perception is the ability to see objects in 3D. It's a skill we use to judge accurately how far or near something is. Both eyes have a slightly different view, allowing the brain to compare and gather more dynamic information.
When the brain can't process the information from one or both eyes, depth perception is impaired. Kids can struggle with simple tasks, like pouring a glass of milk, climbing stairs, or catching a ball.
From tracking soccer players across a field to glancing up when someone calls your name, eye movement is crucial for a range of visual functions. Kids with poor eye muscle control can face challenges with multiple aspects of binocular vision.
The inability to control eye movements can also indicate a central nervous system condition, from inflammation to neurological disorders.
Evaluating the eye's resting position can help determine if a child has eye misalignment. Eye position can affect how the eyes work together, as they need to focus on the same object simultaneously.
Common eye misalignment problems, like strabismus (crossed eyes) and amblyopia (lazy eye), can cause:
- Strained or tired eyes
- Double vision
- Headaches
- Poor depth perception
Convergence is when our eyes move together and aim inward when looking at close distances. Your child may struggle to focus on a sentence or word because their eyes don't line up, resulting in a mismatched image. Kids with convergence insufficiency (poor eye teaming) can experience:
- Blurred or double vision
- Poor concentration
- Headaches
- Vertigo or motion sickness
- Tiredness after near-vision activities
- Poor reading comprehension
Book a Visual Skills Assessment in Kelowna
If reading, focusing, eye coordination, or visual comfort is causing concern, a visual skills assessment can help determine whether a functional vision problem is present.
We’ll explain what we find and recommend appropriate next steps based on your needs.
