Eye movements and reading with large print and optical magnifiers in macular disease

Purpose. Reading rate has been the main performance measure in studies that have compared reading with large print and optical magnifiers; eye movemen t characteristics have not been considered. We compared both eye movement c haracteristics and reading rates for subjects with macular disease reading without and with a range of low-vision devices. Methods. Silent reading rat e and eye movement characteristics for text passages at critical print size of 21 subjects aged 14 to 88 years with macular disease were measured with and without their preferred low-vision device. Saccadic frequency was dete rmined from a sequencing task comprising five letters each separated by 5 d egrees. Eye movements were recorded using an infrared limbal reflection sys tem. Results, There were no significant differences in reading rate, fixati on durations, saccade numbers per word, or percent retrace time when using a tow-vision device compared with reading without a low-vision device. The percentage of regressions was, however, lower with the low-vision device. S accadic frequency in the sequencing task was predictive of reading performa nce with and without a low-vision device. Conclusions. When reading at crit ical print size, in terms of reading rate or saccades per word, there was n o advantage to using large print over an optical low-vision device.