Harris Foundation - Revolutionary Lens' for Children With Dyslexia

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
(Free-Press-Release.com) September 4, 2009 -- The Harris Foundation has recently launched a new web site to fit in with a push towards making their visual Harris Filters (lenses) more widely available to children with dyslexia and reading difficulty. Although the principles behind the lenses have been clinically proven these lenses are brand new, possessing a colour rather like sunglasses, unlike their predecessors which display bright colours in each lens, giving the wearer a slightly eccentric appearance.

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Harris Foundation - Revolutionary Lens' for Children With Dyslexia

Welcome visit Our WebSite:

http://www.harrisdyslexia.com

This is a result of ongoing research conducted by Dr David Harris to help adults and children to read more easily. The Harris Filters change the speed of transmitted light to the brain, which appears to re-synchronise the neural pathways and stop some of the visual page disturbances that cause reading problems for many dyslexics.

The Harris Foundation was set up to offer help and advice to parents and children after being moved by the plight of so many of the people that David Harris saw during his research work at Clatterbridge Hospital. The Foundation aims to make Harris Filters available to all who can be helped via a network of trained practitioners.

A Benevolent Fund has been set up to assist those who are unable to pay for assessments and to fund other investigations into the application of filters to assist the visually impaired and visual disturbance connected with neurological diseases such as Multiple Sclerosis.

Dr Harris feels that the newly designed website which includes a member community will give him an opportunity to directly relate to those that he wants to help and to collaborate with others in his areas of expertise to provide a knowledge-base . A main blog will keep up with the latest research and news while a forum and member blog will allow members to discuss their problems and experiences.

What are Harris Filters:

Harris Filters are an advanced form of David Harris’s award winning range of special lenses that were originally developed to improve colour perception in the colour-blind although David Harris subsequently discovered that they could be modified to reduce or eliminate the visual perceptual distortions that have been shown to be responsible for reading problems encountered by around 3/4 of dyslexic sufferers because of neurological inefficiencies in the magnocellular system that is part of the central nervous system. In addition to the general improvements in reading performance, in making reading easier there has been shown to be a significant reduction in the fatigue from reading that dyslexics have been shown to suffer from.

Developed from his earlier work in 1976, extensive research demonstrated that his lenses could significantly ease reading difficulties. He has gone on to identify the optimum range of spectral transmissions within which to develop his lenses. David explains that people have got very fixated on the use of colour for dyslexia when in fact it is the effect of transmitted light that causes the changes. The Harris filters contain no visible colours and look very much like a pair of normal sunglasses which is of huge cosmetic benefit to the wearers.

The Harris filters contain no visible colours and simply have the appearance of a pair of normal sunglasses which is of huge cosmetic benefit to the wearers.

Helping Children with Dyslexia

The Harris Foundation provides special lenses (''Harris Filters'') that are incorporated into spectacles (including a spectacle prescription from an optician where appropriate) but these are simply an aid for reading, NOT a ''cure''. In fact, David Harris, who invented them, is very much against the use of the word ''cure'' for dyslexics as he says that dyslexia isn't an illness so it doesn't need a cure! The other reality is that it isn't guaranteed that every dyslexic will find a dramatic improvement in their reading ability when using the lenses but the practitioner will be able to provide suitable advice from the measurements that are undertaken.

The reality of Harris Filters is that they make reading easier for the wearer and this has a benefit for both the educational achievements of the wearer and also for their self-esteem. The lenses are clinically proven and their origins were in simple coloured lenses (called ''ChromaGen'') and the results from the main clinical trial were published in an American, peer-reviewed journal in 1998 in order to prove that the lenses assisted reading performance.

Learning to reading and write is a stressful experience for most children. It is the first time that they have had to undertake real academic study and their well-meaning parents and relatives are also under great social pressure to have a well-performing child. Happily, for at least 90% of children this is a scholastic hurdle that they easily leap but for the other 10% who are dyslexic it is much more difficult. Dyslexia has nothing to do with intelligence (in fact, by definition dyslexics are much more intelligent than can be judged by their reading ability) but it does have a link to how intelligence is judged socially and the ongoing effect on self-esteem and general confidence of the individual when the judgement is wrong.

Design for Disabled Accessibility:

The Harris Foundation promotes fair play to people with any disability. For this reason its new website includes both plain text and audio versions of its main site pages.

More information can be found online at http://www.harrisdyslexia.com

     dyslexia in children