Corrected age: reading a premature baby's vision by their due date
If your baby arrived early, their vision runs on the timetable that started at the due date, not the birth date — and using that "corrected age" is the difference between a card…
Blog & notes
The public, plain-language version of our research and design decisions — for parents, caregivers, therapists, and educators. Every article is cited, labels its evidence, and defers to clinicians where it should.
25 articles
High contrast beyond babies: CVI and low vision
High-contrast, complexity-controlled images are not only a newborn thing — they are a standard part of the toolkit for children and adults with CVI or low vision, and this…
What your baby can actually see, month by month
Vision is not switched on at birth — it is built over the first year, on a fairly predictable schedule, and knowing roughly where your baby is on it tells you what kind of picture…
ROP and prematurity: what parents should know
If your baby was born early, there is one vision topic that outranks every card, pattern and printable on this site: retinopathy of prematurity is screened for and managed by…
Why newborns see high contrast best — the science
A newborn's eyes and brain register bold light-dark differences far more strongly than anything subtle — so black-and-white patterns are not a fashion, they are simply what a…
The card is high-contrast. The website doesn't have to be.
The black-and-white card is built for a baby's immature visual system; the website around it is read by an exhausted adult with ordinary eyes — two different pairs of eyes, two…
Nothing on the card but the card
We took the caption off the printed cards: a line of small text at the edge of a high-contrast pattern is clutter competing with the very thing the card is for — and the same…
Why the edges aren't perfectly sharp — and why that's more accurate
If you zoom right in on a card's stripes you will find the boundary pixels are grey, not pure black or pure white — and that faint greyness is the only reason the stripes are all…
Corrected age, on a slider
Designing the "how early was your baby?" control taught us something worth saying out loud: corrected age only ever adjusts downward, and the easiest honest way to ask about…
See what your baby sees: simulating infant acuity in the preview
The generator can blur a preview to approximate what a young baby actually sees at the chosen distance — a quick, honest reminder of why the cards are so bold and so big.
Colour, in order: when babies see red, then blue, then green
Newborns see the world in light and dark, not colour; colour switches on in a known order — red first, then blue and yellow, then green, roughly over the first ~5–6 months. And…
Faces first — and why your own photos make great contrast cards
Babies are wired to look at faces — so a bold, high-contrast version of your face (or a sibling, or the family pet) is one of the most engaging "cards" you can make. That's why…
The Goldilocks principle: matching pattern difficulty to the stage
A pattern that is too simple bores a baby, and one that is too fine or busy looks like grey mush — the sweet spot is something they can just make out, and it moves every few weeks…
How big should it be? A plain-language guide to sizing a contrast card
Getting the size right comes down to just two numbers — how well your child sees right now, and how far away the print will be — and one line of grade-school geometry does the…
How to use contrast cards: short, frequent, baby-led
A few short looks a day — on the order of 3–5 minutes — is plenty. Follow your baby's lead, rotate a few patterns, and talk about what they're seeing. More is not better.
Mounting patterns safely near a baby (and safe sleep)
The single rule that governs everything: nothing can fall on the baby, and the sleep surface stays clear. Patterns go on surfaces (ceiling, wall, the underside of a cabinet) —…
Bullseyes, checkerboards, stripes: the patterns babies prefer
Babies aren't looking at "nothing" — from the first days of life they look longer at bold patterns than at blank fields, and a few shapes (bullseyes and checkerboards especially)…
Print at 100%: why "Fit to Page" quietly ruins a correctly-sized card
The whole point of this tool is a pattern sized for your child's eyes at a real distance — and a single print-dialog setting, "Fit to Page," can silently shrink it. So print at…
Reading your baby's "I'm done" signals (engagement vs. overstimulation)
Your baby will tell you when a pattern is landing and when they've had enough. Engaged looks like fixating and stilling; done looks like looking away, turning, arching, or fussing…
Reading the evidence: established science, practitioner guidance, and opinion
Baby-vision advice online blurs three very different things: what research has established, what professionals commonly do, and someone's opinion. Every article here is labelled…
Why the same contrast card won't work on the ceiling and the changing table
A pattern that's perfect 30 cm from your baby's face is an invisible grey blur on the ceiling 2 m away — because the eye sees angles, not sizes. Same baby, farther surface → the…
Cards supplement, never replace, face-to-face time
The best early "visual stimulus" isn't a card — it's your face, up close, responding to your baby. High-contrast cards fill the other moments; they add to face-to-face time, they…
Tiling explained: a poster-sized contrast print from an ordinary home printer
For a print that hangs far away — a ceiling, the far wall of a cot — one sheet of paper is too small to hold a shape the eye can read. Tiling prints the image across several…
Turning a family photo into a high-contrast card
Upload a photo — a parent's face, a sibling, the family pet, a favourite cup — and the generator turns it, on your device, into a bold high-contrast card sized for the distance. A…
Use it offline: install the generator like an app
The whole generator runs in your browser — so once you've opened it once, you can install it like an app and keep making and printing cards with no internet at all (handy on a…
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