Our Story
How the Wise Eye programme was developed:
Johan Scholtz qualified as an optometrist in 1983. He has constantly been involved with children who have reading disabilities. Several occupational therapists, remedial educators, parents and other reading-education organisations referred children with suspected eye problems to him. One of the most common symptoms was that the child’s eyes would “jump” or “flicker” during the reading process.
He found that the visual abilities and the eye muscle balance of many of these children fell within the normal range. With the use of reading glasses, coloured lenses, and several types of visual therapy and with a large degree of perseverance and dedication, he tried to help these children. The only way to measure his success was to monitor the term-to-term improvement of the children’s academic performance.
However, this was an extremely cumbersome process and required considerable time and perseverance from both parent and child. At the end of 1999, he obtained a newly developed infrared tracing and recording apparatus, which measured an individual’s reading ability effectiveness. This advanced computerised test technology takes 60 readings of each eye per second during silent reading. This was a huge breakthrough, as he could – for the first time – scientifically and graphically prove and record all reading improvements.
Eye movement simulation on the computer indicated the so-called “jumping” and “flickering” of the eyes (wandering, uneven, jerky and reversed eye movements). With the availability of this technology, he was able to prove which eye exercises were effective. With the application of these exercises, he obtained phenomenal results. As time went by, Wise Eye has expanded with new team members, new products and new developments.