LOST FOR WORDS

"STOP moving!" screamed frustrated eight-year-old Sarah Lamb as the words started jumping up and down on her computer screen.

The same happened to 19-year-old Sarah Kemp from Rawtenstall.

"All of a sudden the words started to move. They started wobbling from side to side," revealed care assistant Sarah.

This could be the opening chapter from a surrealist novel but for some people it is real.

As they read words on a page the letters actually become animated like characters in a cartoon.

Some letters wobble on their own, others link up with the rest of the sentence for silly stunts.

Such an irrational image is commonplace for scores of people across East Lancashire who struggle every day to read and write. Some dyslexic and migraine sufferers are prone to the problem.

Yet pioneering work has shown that rainbow colours when put in glasses or transparent A-4 sheets to go over books could be the answer to these age-old problems. Some people call them "magic glasses," revealed Crowthers Optometrists in Bacup, who have treated nearly 50 people and are the only ones in East Lancashire to carry out the colorimeter test.

Dispensing optician Julie Crowther said: "The Medical Research Council in Cambridge were researching the use of colour and invented the intuitive colorimeter."

She said: "People with reading difficulties see words differently. Sometimes the words move or blur or they can only see one word at a time. The researchers found that colour tints eliminated this effect."

Young Sarah was diagnosed as dyslexic, along with her mother Catherine, who both found reading and writing difficult.

"When we look at a page we don't see what other people see," said Catherine.

She added: "We visually cannot see the words. They mingle in together or move up and down on the page. Sarah is too young to understand what is going on."

In her job as supervisor at the Bentley Wood Farm pub/restaurant at Hapton, Catherine memorised the keys on the till because they blurred into one. Catherine and Sarah were given a special eye test by Crowthers on the recommendation of Burnley dyslexic group Right to Write.

The pair say their lives were revolutionised when they were given tinted lenses.

Catherine, 31, said: "We saw for the first time what everybody else saw. It was brilliant. Everything was sharp and bold. As dyslexics we will always have difficulty with words but I can see a full page clearly and it doesn't move.

"I not frightened of writing in public anymore. I no longer pretend to read to my children from a book while making it up. I've rejoined the library and have so much more confidence.

"The numbers on the till at work don't go blurred but I do look like I'm wearing sunglasses at work. The regulars have got use to it now!"

Catherine, of Lowerhouse Lane, Burnley, added: "I also suffered from migraines but the lenses have cured them."

Her husband Stephen looked at a book designed to show normal seeing people what a dyslexic sees and he was astonished. "Words were splitting, snaking, making ladders. He was really shocked," said Catherine.

Sarah Kemp, of Grange Road, has also benefited from the lenses.

"I was really bad at reading. I was frustrated and pretended I didn't have a problem so I didn't get the help I needed and failed a lot of my exams."

It was only when Sarah was at Burnley College re-taking her GCSEs that she was given a colorimeter test.

She said: "I was shocked how well the lenses worked. Words used to move around. With the lenses they nearly stopped still. It depended what colour overlay was used to how much they slowed down. I found red the best."

Sarah added: "I used to feel stupid going out for a meal and telling them I couldn't read the words on the menu. They would start laughing. Now they know and we have a joke about it. They look like sunglasses anyway."

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