Dyslexia Glasses and Coloured Overlays: Do They Work?

No. Coloured overlays, Irlen lenses and glasses sold for dyslexia do not treat dyslexia, and reviews of the research have not found that they improve reading by more than a placebo does. Healthdirect, the Australian Government’s health advice service, says it in one line: “Coloured glasses, coloured overlays and eye exercises don’t treat dyslexia.”

The reason is that dyslexia is not an eyesight problem. It is a difficulty with the language side of reading, which is why what helps is teaching and not a lens. This guide sets out what the eye and learning bodies say, why these products can still seem to help, and when an ordinary eye test is worth having.

What are dyslexia glasses, coloured overlays and Irlen lenses?

Dyslexia glasses, coloured overlays and Irlen lenses are all ways of putting a colour between a reader’s eyes and the page. They differ in form, not in idea.

Coloured overlays are sheets of tinted plastic laid over a page. Reading strips and reading rulers are narrow versions that cover a line or two.
Tinted or coloured lenses put the same colour into a pair of glasses.
Irlen lenses are tinted lenses chosen through the method of Helen Irlen, who in the 1980s described a condition she called scotopic sensitivity syndrome, now usually called Irlen syndrome. The term visual stress is also used for a similar idea.
Dyslexia glasses is a shop term. It usually means tinted lenses and, more recently, electronic glasses.

The claim behind all of them is that some readers are sensitive to particular colours of light, that this makes print blur or move, and that filtering those colours makes reading easier.

What do Australian health and learning bodies say?

Australian eye doctors, the national learning difficulties federation and the government’s health advice service all say coloured overlays and lenses are not a treatment for dyslexia or reading difficulty. The bodies below have each published a position.

Who	Year	What they say
Healthdirect Australia	2024	“Glasses with coloured lenses, coloured overlays and eye exercises don’t help people with dyslexia.”
Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Ophthalmologists (medical eye specialists)	2025	“There remains no reliable evidence to support the claims that Irlen lenses are beneficial in improving reading ability.”
AUSPELD, the federation of SPELD associations	2022	“Limited evidence for the effectiveness of coloured glasses and overlays as an intervention for reading difficulties.”
Dyslexia SPELD Foundation	2016	Behavioural vision therapy, eye muscle exercises and coloured filters and lenses are not recommended in the treatment of reading difficulties.
Macquarie University Special Education Centre	2010	Verdict on Irlen tinted lenses and overlays: “Not Recommended”.
American Academy of Pediatrics and three US eye bodies, joint statement	2009	Approaches that lack evidence, “including eye exercises, behavioral vision therapy, or special tinted filters or lenses, are not endorsed and should not be recommended.”

The ophthalmologists’ college goes further on the condition itself. Its 2025 statement says Irlen syndrome has “no sound theoretical basis” and that “no abnormalities of the visual pathway have been identified in individuals reported to have the condition”. AUSPELD’s guide for parents says the same: there is “no objective scientific evidence to support the existence” of it.

What did the research on coloured overlays and lenses find?

A 2016 systematic review of the research on coloured overlays and lenses found that the better a study was designed, the less benefit it showed. Griffiths and colleagues reviewed 51 published items and rated each for risk of bias. They report that “the effect size is generally small and/or similar to the improvement found with a placebo condition”.

The review’s conclusion is that “the use of coloured lenses or overlays to ameliorate reading difficulties cannot be endorsed”. A 2025 review by Australian and New Zealand eye specialists reached the same position: the use of coloured filters for children with reading difficulties “cannot be recommended or promoted based on literature published to date”.

Why do coloured overlays seem to help some children?

Coloured overlays can seem to help because a child who is given something new, told it will help and then watched while reading often does read a little better that day. The 2016 review names three ordinary reasons for this, none of which is the colour:

Placebo. A child who expects reading to be easier often finds it feels easier.
Practice. The second reading of a passage, or of a test, goes better than the first.
The Hawthorne effect. People try harder when someone is paying close attention to how they perform.

Two more details from the ophthalmologists’ statement explain a lot. The colour is chosen by asking the child which one feels best, and studies “have shown poor repeatability of colour selection on retesting”. And the symptoms described, such as eye strain, glare, headache and words appearing to move, “overlap with or can be explained by other recognised ocular conditions” that an eye examination can find.

None of this means a child is making it up. A page may well feel more comfortable through a tint. Comfort is not the same as reading skill, and the college notes there are no large, high quality trials showing that filters improve reading “beyond subjective reports of comfort”.

Is there any harm in trying an overlay?

The harm in coloured overlays and lenses is cost and delay, not danger. The Macquarie University briefing puts it plainly: “The expense of such treatment is unwarranted and may divert resources from evidence-based reading interventions.” AUSPELD’s guide rates the cost of coloured glasses as moderate to high.

Delay is the larger cost for a child who is learning to read. Months spent waiting to see whether a tint works are months without the teaching that does. The 2025 review warns that therapies without benefit “may contribute to the delay of appropriate interventions”.

An inexpensive overlay that a child likes does not need to be taken away. It should not be counted as treatment, and it should not be the reason other help is put off.

Should my child still have an eye test?

Yes. An ordinary eye test with an optometrist is sensible for any child who finds reading hard, because eyesight problems are common and easy to miss. Healthdirect advises parents to “arrange to have your child’s hearing and vision checked” to rule those problems out.

An eye test and a dyslexia product are different things. The first looks for a recognised condition, such as long or short sight or trouble focusing up close, and corrects it. The joint statement from the US paediatric and eye bodies describes the link this way: “Vision problems can interfere with the process of learning; however, vision problems are not the cause of primary dyslexia or learning disabilities.”

So glasses for a real eyesight problem are worth having. The Dyslexia SPELD Foundation notes that they can make reading more comfortable but “do not directly improve decoding or comprehension”. If a child has headaches, sore eyes, blurred or double vision, see an optometrist or GP whatever else is going on with reading. The what is dyslexia guide explains why the difficulty sits with language and not with sight.

Do vision therapy, eye exercises or other dyslexia programs work?

Eye exercises and vision therapy are not supported as treatments for dyslexia either. AUSPELD’s guide says: “There is no scientific evidence to support the use of eye exercises or vision therapy to directly or indirectly treat learning disabilities.”

The same guide reviews other products and programs sold for dyslexia. On special typefaces, it says any benefit comes from the spacing between letters and not their shape, which the dyslexia fonts guide covers. On the Davis program, it finds “limited independent research evidence evaluating the program and its claims”.

Electronic glasses are newer, and the statements quoted in this guide were written about coloured filters, so they do not cover them. The same test applies to any product: has it been tested in independent, controlled trials, and did children’s reading improve, not only their comfort?

Where does the same money go further?

Money spent on dyslexia goes furthest on teaching. Healthdirect states that “structured synthetic phonics is effective at improving the reading skills of people with dyslexia”, and that this can come from a learning support teacher, an experienced tutor or an experienced speech pathologist. The ophthalmologists’ college says the same from the eye side: the interventions known to improve reading “remain those grounded in language skills”.

Before paying for any dyslexia product or program, four checks are worth making:

Does it teach reading or spelling, or does it claim to fix an underlying cause?
Is there research on it by people who do not sell it? Healthdirect’s advice is to look for independent reviews, “not reviews provided by the program manufacturer”.
Did reading itself improve in that research, measured on a reading test?
What does the whole course cost, and what else could that pay for?

Some useful help costs little. Text to speech and audiobooks are built into most phones and computers, as the assistive technology guide explains, and schools can make adjustments, covered in dyslexia at school. For the teaching itself, the dyslexia treatment guide sets out what the evidence supports and who can deliver it.