We’ve got a leaflet to help our Chinese speaking friends understand our process … with help from a Harland Works placement student. Going to put on website, so we can ensure people can get most of their interactions with us.

You can call them reading glasses if you like, but they really are not just reading glasses are they? Such glasses are actually to help you see clearly doing things that are closer to you - so your phone, removing a splinter, wiring a plug, painting your nails, changing a SIM card …. not just reading at all.

My staff are instructed not to call them reading glasses - we use the terms glasses for close work or near work. It’s a losing battle in some senses, as petrol stations sell ready made readers and even eye surgeons use the term - unthinkingly and unhelpfully in some cases, in my opinion.

The reason for needing glasses for close work is most commonly due to presbyopia and/or hyeropia - which are rather unfortunately lumped together into the ambiguous term “long sightedness” - also, banned here, unless explained properly.

We all, if we live long enough, get presbyopia. It’s the process where the lens inside the eye loses flexibility over time and this leads to difficulty focusing for close tasks (usually in 40s) and the classis feeling of the arms being too short. Any glasses that are given for this will make close work clear, but will be blurred when looked through in to the distance eg TV/driving - hence the way people peer over the top of them - sometimes for dramatic effect! These are the ones you can buy in pound shops / petrol stations - everywhere! They have been available to buy in this unregulated manor since 1987 - at the same time as Thatcher got rid of NHS specs and eye tests for all. Many people have taken the opportunity to not have eye exams and just buy those glasses exclusively and then suffer preventable and significant sight loss due to undetected glaucoma.

Hyperopia can be an issue for people of any age - it’s the most common cause for the need for spectacles in young children - uncorrected it can lead to strabismus (squint) and/or amblyopia (lazy eye). It means the eye is relatively too short for the focusing system and so the image arrives behind the retina and depending how much focusing capacity you have can lead to blur at near., or at all distances.

Astigmatism, myopia and asymmetric prescriptions between the eyes can also lead to the need for glasses for close work too. Hence why the long/short sighted terms can be deeply unhelpful in understanding what’s going on with your eyes, when things are not clear or they feel strained.

If you are struggling with close work tasks the solution may be single vision glasses for close work and/or varifocal/progressive lenses and/or contact lenses … this is all presuming any health issues have been ruled out.

So, if you are going to call them reading glasses - then please do so understanding that they are so much more than that.

If you order specs from an opticians, then when you collect them, they should be fitted. Sometimes that fitting means they fit well for the lifetime of that pair, other times addiitonal tweaks are required and sometimes it transpires that the chosen frame is never going to fit satifactorily and a new one needs to be picked. If you buy online then you have to hope that you are lucky and that they just happen to fit well enough without adjustments. Of course, online purchases are partly cheaper as those businesses are not paying for staff to do fitting and adjustments - they often rely on the goodwill of high st opticians, who help adjust specs that they have not sold - we do it, but it’s obvioulsy a slightly odd situation.

Fitting and adjusting specs is actually, in my opinion, much harder than it initially appears. It is always easier if the specs chosen are chosen with guidance - guidance that ensures they are the right size for the nose, head width and depth and crucially the prescription of the patient.

Specs have 3 contact areas - the nose, ears and temples. Ideally the weight should be distributed between those three areas. If not, then the specs might not be stable and slip and/or be uncomfortable. For example, if the length to the bend/hook on the sides is either too far back or too far forward the specs will be too weighted on the nose and slip/hurt/leave a red mark. If they bridge is too wide then this can lead to discomfort behind th eears as there is too much weight there. If the sides are splyed out too much the specs will slip off … the potential issues are endless.

So, if you buy from an opticians - then make sure your specs are fitted at collection - this shouldn’t just be asking you if “they feel alright”. If you find they are not right, then go back - a few tweaks can often be neede to get it right and some frames gradully loosen over time (with wear) and they need occasional fettles to keep them comfortable/stable.

If you buy online then ask the seller what they suggest.