Myopia-Related Online Reading Material Too Complex for General Public, Study Says

As is often the case, patient education websites on myopia overshoot the recommended reading level advised by experts for easy communication of complex medical topics. This study evaluated 40 different sites and found most to be written at too high a level for mainstream understanding. Click image to enlarge. Researchers discovered that, among 120 websites containing patient education materials for myopia management, none met the recommended sixth-grade reading level across all readability indices, according to a study published in Investigative Ophthalmology and Visual Science.They examined the top 10 Google search results from May 2024 for freely available patient information on approved myopia management treatments, focusing on four modalities: orthokeratology, myopia control, spectacle lenses, myopia control soft contact lenses and atropine, as well as several products. The searches produced 120 results after excluding repeated low-level red-light therapy due to insufficient websites. Researchers restricted selections to English-language, patient-oriented resources and included PDFs, such as brochures or package inserts, while excluding journal articles and websites targeted at practitioners.A total of 40 of the websites were described as “myopia management modality search results,” while the remaining 80 were “myopia management product search results” in the paper. They were found via Google searches conducted from Canada and Australia. “Search regions were specified because the origin of a search can affect the order of Google search results, but results were not limited to websites from Canada or Australia,” the researchers wrote. Their readability was assessed using several different scoring indexes: the Flesch Reading Ease Score (FRES), Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level (FKGL), Gunning Fog Index (GFI), Simple Measure of Gobbledygook (SMOG) Index, Coleman Liau Index (CLI) and JAMA benchmark.For the 40 modality-related sites, the median FRES score reached 51.2 (0-100 score, higher is better), FKGL reached 9.9 (score approximates school grade level), GFI reached 12.1 (lower is better, ideal range is 7-8), SMOG reached 12.5 (score approximates school grade level) and CLI reached 12.0 (score approximates school grade level). Only 7.5% met the desired FKHL score. Spectacle and soft contact lens materials showed the highest compliance rates at 10% and 20%, respectively, for one index. The word counts averaged at 1,042 words across these sites, and sentences totaled to an average of 14.5 words long.The 80 product-related sites displayed similar patterns, with a median FRES of 48.3, FKGL of 9.9, GFI of 11.4, SMOG of 12.2, and CLI of 12.2. 12.5% “complied with the recommended sixth-grade reading level,” the authors wrote in their paper.Only seven websites met all four JAMA benchmarks and all came from one professional organization. Most sites satisfied just one benchmark with authorship as the most common at 59.17%.The authors concluded that these materials generally required reading skills above the sixth-grade level and fell short on quality standards. They noted that easier readability could improve patient access to treatment and outcomes and that search results being at the top of Google searches did not guarantee better materials.Click here for the journal source. Jong M, Waugh M, Ozmizrak P, Flitcroft I. Readability of Online Patient Education Materials for Myopia Management. Invest. Ophthalmol. Vis. Sci. March 16, 2026. [Epub ahead of print]. This article was developed by the editorial staff in conjunction with experts in the field. In the process, AI may have been among the editorial tools used to meet the goals of human editors, who approved all content.