Germany
We build a mobile eyesight check you can repeat at home — acuity, astigmatism and colour vision, measured the same way every time.
Most people find out their eyesight has changed by accident. A road sign reads blurrier than it used to. Subtitles need the front row. A headache arrives every evening at around the same hour. By the time any of that registers, the change has usually been underway for months, and nobody can say when it started — because there is nothing to compare it to.
That gap is the whole reason RATO-VISION exists. We are a software company in Germany, and what we make is a mobile app that turns an eyesight check into something ordinary: a few minutes, a wall, a phone, and a result that is written down. Not once, in a waiting room, but as often as you like, in the same room, under roughly the same light.
It runs the checks a screening is made of, one at a time. Visual acuity: rows of optotypes that shrink line by line, one eye covered, then the other, so a difference between your eyes shows up instead of averaging itself away. Astigmatism: a radial dial where you report which spokes look darker or sharper than the rest. Colour vision: plates of coloured dots with a figure hidden inside, where what matters is not only whether you see a number but which number you see.
None of that is new — these are the classic screening charts, and they have been the classic charts for a long time because they work. What a phone adds is consistency. The app asks for your screen and the distance you are standing back, and sizes everything accordingly, so the smallest line you managed in your hallway in March is comparable with the smallest line you manage in October. Without that step, a home test is a guess with a chart on it.
It is not a diagnosis, and we would rather say so on the first screen than in the small print. A screening tells you whether something has moved. It cannot tell you why, it cannot see the back of your eye, and it does not replace an examination by an optician or an eye doctor. The most useful thing our app can ever do is send somebody to a professional earlier than they would otherwise have gone — carrying a history, rather than a feeling that something is off.
We are a small product team: the people who write the test logic also read what users tell us went wrong with it. Every chart in the app has been checked against the geometry it is supposed to reproduce, every instruction has been rewritten until people stopped misreading it, and anything we are not sure of is left out rather than shipped with an asterisk. The app is distributed through Google Play. If you want to talk to us about it — as a user with a question, as an optician, as an employer looking at eyesight checks for staff, or as a partner — the form further down reaches the team directly.
Four modules, each one short enough to finish in a single sitting and designed to be run again later.
The familiar shrinking rows of letters and symbols, sized for your screen and the distance you stand back.
A radial dial of lines where you report which direction looks darker, sharper or doubled.
Dot plates with a figure hidden in them, for red-green and blue-yellow discrimination.
Every completed run is kept, so the point of the app is the second test and the tenth, not the first.
All four are screening checks. They indicate whether something has changed; they do not diagnose an eye condition.
The app asks for your device and the distance you can stand back, then sizes every optotype to match. It is the dull step most home tests skip, and the only reason two results months apart can be compared at all.
Both eyes open hides a weaker eye behind a stronger one. Each check is run per eye and stored per eye, so a drift on one side is visible instead of averaged away.
Where to stand, how bright the room should be, glasses on or off, what to do if you are unsure of a line. Each screen says one thing, in the order you need it.
Results are shown as a history rather than a pass mark. What you are looking for is the shape of the curve — stable, or sliding — and that only appears once you have tested a few times.
Your history exports as a plain summary with dates and conditions, so a professional can see when a change started instead of relying on how long ago it felt like.
A test takes a wall, a phone and a few steps back.
No. A screening can show that something has changed; an examination finds out what and why, including the things no chart on a screen can see. Treat a worrying result as a reason to book an appointment, not as an answer.
Because you tell it. Before the first test the app asks for your device and the distance you can stand back, and scales the chart to that. If you change rooms or phones, run the calibration again — otherwise the next result is measuring your furniture rather than your eyes.
Whichever you choose, keep it the same every time, and tell the app which it was. A history only reads straight if the conditions behind each point were the same.
Often enough that you build a line, rarely enough that you are not testing your own patience. Many people settle on every few months, with an extra run if something feels different. The app will remind you at the interval you pick.
It is distributed through Google Play for Android devices. If you have a question about a specific device or about using the app in a workplace or practice, send it through the form below.
Users, opticians, occupational health teams and partners all reach the same inbox. Tell us what you need and we will answer it properly.
Someone from the team will get in touch by email shortly.