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Eccentric Viewing and Steady Eye strategy
Eccentric Viewing and Steady Eye are techniques that can help a person to use their residual vision more effectively.
Eccentric viewing, occurs where instead of looking 'straight at' something, an area of peripheral retina is used to look at objects.
It takes practice to master the technique, as prior to the development of macular disease your entire life has been spent using the central part of your vision to see things. With this skill you have to teach your brain to use an alternative part of the visual field.
You probably already use eccentric viewing to some extent when looking at things around you, perhaps you turn your head to one side to better see a friend's face or the television or have spotted something tiny on the floor 'out of the corner' of your eye.
Eccentric viewing is a technique that people can learn to utilise in order to use their peripheral vision more effectively. With time and practice this combined with Steady Eye strategy (finding the best point of vision and then keeping head and eyes still and moving text) can be developed in to a skill that makes reading easier, increasing reading speed and comprehension.
Eccentric viewing will never make your vision as good as it was before the onset of macular disease, as the arrangement and concentration of the cells in the peripheral retina can not provide as detailed and sharp an image as the macular. What it can do however, is help you to maximise the use of your vision.
Not everyone is able to use eccentric vision, those that can, find it makes a tremendous difference. Lots of people with macular disease can benefit from the use of Steady Eye Strategy.
Ask at your local low vision service or your rehabilitation officer if they are able to help you develop these skills.
Eccentric Viewing for Distance:
There are various ways to identify the best position for you to look to see an object or a person more clearly. One that many people use as a starting point is the 'clock face' method.
Using a clock, look at each of the numbers in turn - when looking at the numbers, locate which number brings the hands into sharpest focus. Remember that the actual number that you are focusing on may disappear or become difficult to see, as you are placing the very central part of retina over the top of the number. When you have decided which number to look towards to give you the clearest view of the clock hands, practise looking away from the clock and then back to the chosen number. The number position also give you the position of where to look with other objects, for example if your best position was at 2 then when looking at objects, to see them more clearly, you need to look above and to the right of the object.
If you use eccentric viewing when watching the television, it may help to place a marker in the correct position (using the clockface method) to make the screen appear clearer. If your number is 2 then perhaps place an ornament on top of the television and to the right, or perhaps the red power light coincides with your best point of vision. So you focus on the light or the ornament, which may actually disappear but your view of the screen will be clearer.
Ask a friend to help you with this exercise. Imagine a large clock face around a friend's face 1 at the top, 6 by the chin and 3 and 9 by the ears. Focusing on the point where the numbers would be, look at each one in turn.
Which number makes your friends face appear clearer?
With people you don't know well, looking above or below a persons face is less obvious than looking to one side of them, although this may not be as clear for you.
Steady Eye
Once the best area of vision is identified, you have to keep your head still and your eyes steady to receive the most benefit. So that instead of moving your eyes across the page as you read, you move the page itself from right to left. This skill takes practice to perfect as you are breaking a learnt habit – the reflex movement of the eyes when reading.
