

Reading and Vision - rajarcsp
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/beyond-the-label/201209/reading-and-vision

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kellishaver
It never would have occurred to me that there would ever be any kind of link
between vision and reading ability. I say this as someone who is legally
blind.

The physical requirements of reading for me, particularly as a young child,
have at times been cumbersome - large print books, magnifiers, etc. When I try
and read without those, my reading speed would slow to a crawl, but as long as
I can see what I'm reading, I can read it. I never struggled with reading as a
child. I've always been a very avid reader.

Of course, being unable to see what I was reading at all (where "see" is a
relative term and could just as easily mean braille) I would never have
learned to read, but that's more of an issue of lack of exposure to reading,
not specifically a link between reading capability and visual acuity.

One thing that did come about as a result of my low vision with regards to
reading, which (I think) helped me a great deal is that my dad read to me a
_lot_. He recognized that reading for me was physically awkward to do, and so
he read to me all the time, probably well past the age that a lot of kids are
read to. I remember listening to him read books when I was 12yrs old.

Since he was the one doing the reading, he would read books with more
sophisticated language than I might have been naturally exposed to in books at
that age; books like "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea", "Robinson Crusoe," etc.
So I ended up getting exposed to a lot of language and a lot of literature.
This further motivated me to keep reading more on my own and gave me the
vocabulary to do so.

