Today's digitalized world places great demands on the visual system. People of all ages are affected. Especially children and young people spend a great deal of their awake time staring at their phones and computers. Having good visual acuity is not enough to meet the demands placed on the visual system. The view should be comfortable and the eyes should work together as a pair.

Against this background, it is important to investigate the visual functions of children and young people. The purpose of this final work is to survey the visual functions of school children in Swedishspeaking Finland to get a picture of what school students are seeing today. The survey results are linked to the results of the word decoding test H4, which is done annually in the schools. A quantitative survey of 26 children in Grades 3-4 in Swedishspeaking Finland was conducted. Visual acuity, convergence, accommodation of the eye, and stereopsis were examined. Eye movements, binocular vision and fusional vergence were also checked.

The survey shows that problems with close-up visualization appear in the survey group. Among the 26 students studied, three were found with a value lower than 60” in the stereotest. Two students had problems to maintain the fixation of their eyes. Eight had a remote convergence point of view. Fourteen pupils had lower accommodation values (amplitude or facility) than expected for the age group. Nine pupils had a latent hyperopia, they had an equally good or even better visual acuity in the binocular +1 test. Four students were found with a non-compensated eso- or exophoria, two of which reported headache as a symptom of history. Eight school children read fewer words than expected in the word decoding test H4. In all of these, some visual aberrations were found. For half of all the examined students, no measures were recommended while another half was recommended eyeglasses, orthopedic exercises or was further directed to ophthalmologists.

The result supports previous research that has shown that many children are struggling with their close-up vision and that this affects reading ability and cause discomfort in their eyes. Previous research also shows that these students can be difficult to find in the standard screening following the recommendations of the Finnish Institute of Health and Welfare, THL. It would therefore be important to review the recommendations and that school healthcare professionals would receive training to be better equipped in their task. Nice alternative screening models are already available in a number of locations in our country. Nothing prevents other municipalities from following.