IReST – International Reading Speed Texts – In English

• Easy to use
• Easy to handle
• Easy to measure (by stopwatch)
• Easy to calculate (normal values and formula included)

Characteristics:  

• Set of 10 paragraphs of text in each language for repeated measurements
• Comparability between languages for international studies
• Natural conditions: newspaper print, meeting the demands of everyday life

Applications:

• For normal subjects
• For patients with low vision (monitoring of disease, the effect of treatment and rehabilitation)
• For patients with developmental dyslexia (severity of the reading disorder, the effect of training, etc.) – for juveniles and adults
• Low Vision patients
• Disease monitoring in AMD, especially in treatment studies
• After refractive surgery
• After multifocal intraocular lenses
• Neurological reading disorders
• Developmental dyslexia
• Studies with normal subjects

User groups:

• Ophthalmologists and neurologists
• Optometrists and ophthalmic opticians
• Orthoptists and low vision specialists
• Teachers and psychologists
• All reading researchers

The IReST differs from prior text charts that used single sentences by employing linguistically standardized paragraphs. They close a gap in the diagnostics of reading performance. The paragraphs are designed to resemble everyday life situations of reading continuous text, such as in books or newspapers. The level of difficulty corresponds to sixth-grade reading (10–12 years), which is comprehensible for teenagers and adults. Due to lower variance, measuring the reading time of a complete paragraph rather than a single sentence or random words is more reliable. Furthermore, it can provide some information about fluency, fatigue, and mistakes.