People with macular degeneration and other eye diseases may benefit from a simple trick of turning a page sideways, says a new study in the journal Optometry and Vision Science.
Macular degeneration, the leading cause of blindness in older people, can interfere with reading, even in mild cases. But turning the page 90 degrees clockwise significantly improved people's ability to read words using their peripheral vision, according to the study, the
Wall Street Journal reports.
For the study, researchers assigned 21 normal-sighted students in their early 20s from the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis and City University London in the U.K. to one of three groups.
One group was trained to read horizontal text rotated 90 degrees. Another group was trained to read normal, horizontal text. Training consisted of reading aloud 216 sentences a day, in six blocks of 36 sentences, for four consecutive days. The third group received no training.
For the readers who read text turned 90 degrees, average speed jumped dramatically, the researchers found.