Ready Made spectacles

Ready-made spectacles are inexpensive spectacles which are sold without prescription in pharmacies and other outlets. Although ready-made spectacles are often sold as 'magnifying spectacles' they are designed to correct presbyopia. Presbyopia is a condition which affects practically all people over the age of approximately 45 years, in which the eye gradually loses the ability to adjust its focus to see near objects clearly.

Unfortunately people in this age group are also the most likely to suffer from eye diseases such as glaucoma and cataracts and are likely to neglect having their eyes examined for these diseases because they think that their problems will be fixed by the ready-made spectacles. Without a professional eye examination, many serious conditions can easily go unnoticed until vision has been irretrievably damaged.

Ready-made spectacles are also a poor consumer choice from an optical perspective. They have the same prescription in each lens but 75 per cent of people requiring a vision correction require lenses with different powers in each eye. They do not have any correction for astigmatism and 80 per cent of people require a correction for astigmatism.