The Purpose of High-Powered Readers
If you need reading glasses, you know they’re for reading. But what happens when even the strongest conventional glasses aren’t enough? In low vision, your central vision is impaired, making it impossible to reach 20/20 acuity. This is where high-powered readers come in.
While standard reading glasses help you see clearly at a typical reading distance (12-16 inches), a low vision diagnosis can reduce your acuity to 20/40, 20/60, or worse. At this point, holding reading material at a normal distance is no longer effective.
High-powered readers solve this problem by shortening your focal distance and magnifying what you see. Instead of a normal reading distance, you’ll hold your material much closer, using glasses specifically designed for that closer distance. As low vision progresses, you might need increasingly stronger readers.
Beyond Standard Magnification
Standard reading glasses typically range from +1 to +3 power. We, however, make high-powered readers from +4 up to an incredibly strong +48. These numbers relate directly to the focal length of the lens.
For example, a +4 diopter has a focal length of 1/4 of a meter. A +48 diopter has a focal length of 1/48 of a meter—just a little over two centimeters. With a +48 reader, you would hold the material about two centimeters from your face. At this power, you wouldn’t be reading a book; you’d be using the lens to examine a tiny object or perform a specific, close-up task.
Charlie Saccarelli
President, Chadwick OpticalAs President of Chadwick Optical, Charlie Saccarelli is the driving force behind the company’s mission to help every patient left behind by the current health care system. Under his leadership, Chadwick has grown from a simple optical lab into a trusted resource for practitioners around the world looking for ways to help the patients that “can’t be helped.” He is a master optician, a father, a bit of a nerd, and a passionate patient advocate who has lectured worldwide on all things optical.