Vision problems are common with autism and many times are overlooked. Typical autistic behaviors, such as: poor eye contact, looking through or beyond objects, extreme aversion to light, unusual reaction to sight, lack of reciprocal play, inordinate fear of heights or lack of appropriate fear of heights and stemming, could be visual symptoms.
If your child has a diagnosis on the autism spectrum, be sure they have a visual evaluation with a developmental optometrist as soon as possible. A person does not have to be verbal in order to find out if they are nearsighted, farsighted or have astigmatism. Visual games will be played to see how the person’s eyes aim, focus, track, follow, move, see 3-D (depth perception), and process central-peripheral information.