A Web Site to Cast Your Eyes Upon
American Optometric Assn.
https://aoanet.org
Background: Founded in 1898, the American Optometric Assn. represents more than 32,000 doctors of optometry, optic technicians and other professionals who diagnose vision problems and prescribe glasses and contact lenses. This site is meant to both explain the profession to consumers and provide practical eye-care information.
What Works: You’ll find some useful, accessible material here, including first-aid tips, cautions about sunlight exposure and an explanation of “floaters,” those tiny specks that can hover like light snow before the eye (often they’re pieces of protein trapped during eye formation before birth). The whole Web site floats, in a way, touching lightly but soundly on crossed eyes, “lazy” eyes and so-called low vision, a deterioration that often occurs with age and affects millions. Measurement of vision, you will learn, depends very much on the person being observed: “Someone with relatively good acuity (e.g., 20/40) can be having a very hard time functioning, while someone with worse acuity (e.g., 20/200) might not be having any real problems doing the things that they want to do,” it advises. The optometric association also makes clear what optometrists can--and cannot--treat.
What Doesn’t: The association loses its light touch when discussing LASIK, the laser eye correction technique that has swept the country in the last several years, becoming among the most popular elective surgeries performed. Though not licensed to perform the procedure (ophthalmologists do it), optometrists by now are plenty familiar with LASIK and most of all its complications. Yet the page discussing the risks and issues raised by LASIK also reviews half a dozen cornea procedures--and amounts to a jumble of medical jargon that belongs in a research journal, not on a consumer Web site. The optometric association could have handled this tricky subject more in depth by simply linking consumers to another site, but there are no good links from the site.
