New website to help stroke survivors learn to read again

A medical and technological collaboration between the UCL Institute of Neurology and UCL's Multimedia team has developed 'Read-Right', a therapeutic website designed to help people with Hemianopic Alexia (HA) to improve and test their reading ability from their own homes. HA damages a person's sight, usually after a stroke or brain injury, and results in the loss of half of a person's field of vision. This makes reading difficult and slow. Some people give up reading or even lose their jobs because they can?t read at a sufficient pace. Read-Right enables people with HA to read scrolling text, which is easier to read than static writing on a page because it creates an involuntary eye movement. The therapy has been shown to improve a person's ability to read normal text when used as part of a rehabilitation programme. Preliminary findings show that as little as 7 to 14 hours of therapy over several weeks could make reading easier for people with HA.