There are several types of vision defect that result in people needing to wear reading glasses. It is usually fairly young people who become nearsighted and need glasses to see distances, for example to read the board or screen in lectures at college; or to see adequately for safe driving. If this is you, then you should be getting your eyes tested by an optician regularly – every two years or so.
If you are somebody who really doesn’t appreciate the music in the charts today, then you have probably reached middle age, and if your eyesight is starting to deteriorate, it is more likely due to the perfectly natural process of aging. You will find that you have trouble reading a book or newspaper, but that seeing distances is okay – you are presbyopic! This is a slightly different condition from farsightedness (which can also affect focusing on distant objects), but commonly the two are called the same thing by non-experts.
Whereas a younger nearsighted person will need to go and find an optician – and often buy their specs from the same place – if you know that your sight is just suffering from a little aging, you can bypass this step, and buy very cheap reading glasses from some drugstores and other retail outlets. All you need to do is make an appointment, if they are usually busy, and then show up. Often though, no appointment is necessary. You will try various pairs of glasses on and then try to read a page of written text. Keep trying pairs until the writing is perfectly readable. Then it’s a simple case of choosing a pair in the style you like that has the same strength lenses.
It is best to see an optician still, even if you think your eyesight is going fuzzy because of your age; opticians check for other eye health problems too, so you’ll want to rule these out. But having a test at an optician’s doesn’t mean you have to buy your reading glasses there. Go online, where there are tons of stores selling non prescription glasses – though of course, you do need a recent set of eye test results in this case so they can send you the right strength ones! And you can even save money this way if you are shortsighted; just pay for the eye test, and buy your specs online.
