Mieru screener’s handbook

1. Before you start

Screen in the brightest room available, with the chart out of direct sunlight and at the eye height of the people being screened. Measure the distance with the cord in the kit: 5 metres for the school chart, 2.5 metres for the home chart. If the room is too short, use the half-size chart at half the distance; never guess.

Check the chart’s size each morning with the calibration card. On the home chart and on kit tablets, line 2.0 is a calibration line: if you, with normal sight, can read it easily at the testing distance, the chart is printed or displayed too large.

2. Testing

Test one eye at a time, with the other covered by the occluder or a clean card, never by the child’s fingers. Point to rings in a random order, not along the row. Accept a pointed hand, a spoken direction or the child turning the response card. Stop at the first line where the child gets fewer than three in five right. Their result is the line above.

Do not hurry, do not hint and do not praise or correct individual answers. Children who are nervous do worse, and children who think they are being judged will guess.

3. Recording and referral

Record each eye as a grade, A to D. Refer every child with a grade of C or D in either eye, every child who squints or whose eyes do not move together, and every child a parent or teacher is worried about, whatever their grade. Recheck children with a grade of B in six months. Give the referral slip to the child’s family the same day.

4. Devices

No images of children may be taken during screening, by any camera, phone or device. If you wear an optical implant, switch off recording and any function that identifies people before screening begins, as the Foundation’s safeguarding rules and KF-OS 2 require. If your implant cannot do this, you may not screen; tell your Mieru coordinator, who will find you another role.

5. Syncing a kit tablet

Kit tablets store results, not images, and sync them to the Chiba data service at the end of each screening day over any internet connection. The tablet shows its kit ID and asks for the kit key, which your coordinator gives you on the course. The sync address is shared with other Chiba data services and is kiroshi.org/kura/.

To practise syncing on the course, use the training kit: kit ID KIT-TRAIN-01, key MIERU-TRAINING. Training mode does not store real results.