Identifying Visual Stress and Assessing The Effect of Colored Overlay on a Person with Visual Stress Symptoms among MSU Students

Abstract

Visual stress is identified as the experience of visual distortions and discomfort during prolonged reading and alleviated with coloured overlays. With coloured overlays, it also helps to improve reading speed. The aim of this research is to focus on identifying and assessing visual stress associated with reading speed and most preferred colour overlays during routine eye examination. An experimental study was conducted on 40 MSU students. They were identified using a set of questionnaire designed to accomplish the aims of this study. The detailed questionnaire consisted of 19 questions enquiring on ocular history. Question 2 until 6 shows strong indicator of binocular vision problem while question 14 until 19 shows strong indicator of visual stress. The questionnaire was introduced by Sylvia Moody to differentiate whether the subject is having binocular vision problem or visual stress. Next, we proceed with visual stress assessment. The patients were given a computer screen as a reading material and reading speed was taken before and after using coloured overlays. Data was entered on SPSS version 22.0. It is indicated that more than half of the subject are having visual stress (52.5%). The common symptom reported were eye tired due to reading (76.2%), eye distracted when reading (76.2%), and uncomfortable due to fluorescent lighting (76.2%). There is a significant difference in reading speed before and after using coloured overlays (p-value <0.01). The most preferred colour overlays is Aqua (23.8%), Grass (23.8%), Magenta (19%) and Purple (19%). There are benefit of using coloured overlay if the subject is having a sign and symptoms of visual stress. The coloured overlays chosen by the subject is different from one another depends on their sensitivity and specificity required