More middle-aged and older adults are wearing soft contacts than ever.

And one of the biggest reasons they stop wearing contacts is the difficulty they face reading with their contacts after presbyopia begins to set in around the early 40’s.

Presbyopia is the diminished ability of the natural lens in our eyes to focus up on close objects. It begins with the occasional medicine bottle being a struggle to read and then over time more and more gets blurry. It can be very frustrating to stare at something up close and have it be blurry regardless of what you do.

So there are three basic choices a contact lens wearer can do to aid their reading while still wearing contact lenses.

Reading Glasses

Initially, the use of an over-the-counter reader or prescription reading glass for occasional use works well for people in the early stages of presbyopia. They are worn over distance contact lenses so there is little adjustment and vision is clear near and far. However, they need to be with you, not...

Recent Census Bureau data shows a population of approximately 70 million baby boomers (the generation born from 1946-1964). What does that have to do with low vision you may ask? Approximately 40 million people worldwide have some sort of blindness, and aging increases the incidence of macular degeneration and other vision impairment that qualifies them as “low vision” persons.

Low vision is a condition of the eye in which the vision falls below 20/70 in the better seeing eye. It impairs the recipients, rendering them unable to perform daily tasks that others take for granted. With this rising aging population, the awareness of low vision therapy, diagnosis, and treatments are more widely available.

Low vision treatment can help people recover from decreased visual function due to retinal disease, brain injury, neurological damage, and other causes.

It is not only the elderly population that is affected--approximately 20% of low vision patients are children under the age...