What it’s Like to be Visually Impaired

Josh was born prematurely at 32 weeks and had to be in an incubator for just over a month. It's a condition that's linked to too much oxygen in the incubator called retinopathy of prematurity, which basically means that the retinas end up detaching because they're starved of oxygen. He's been blind in his right eye completely more or less from birth, and then in his left eye, he's had some degree of vision that's deteriorated for a very long time. My condition was stable, so I had enough sight to play football and to have fun with friends, but when I went into year eight in 2010, I basically lost all of my sight in one night. He was quite angry about it; he was upset. I think he had to probably go through a bit of a grieving process as well. Really, he was frustrated because he couldn't get around as well as he had been able to do, but I kind of got back up and dealt with it and carried on. Josh has been using a long cane for almost as long as he can remember, but a new and complicated route, like getting to a work placement in the center of London, brings a whole new set of challenges. I was very interested in law, and that's actually what I did in my work experience. I went to shadow a barrister for a week, a blind barrister. One of the things I wanted to achieve was to get there independently without any help. So the journey consisted of a train from Oxted to London and then the tube from London Bridge to Moorgate, and then at Moorgate, I would phone Dan, who was the person I was working with, who came to pick me up and took me to the office. I did some training with the mobility officer, so I was already familiar with the route, but she basically built on what I already knew and helped me just gain more confidence in what I was doing. I think it was more nerve-wracking for Mom, to be honest, than for me. In the end, I quite enjoyed it, to be honest. It was nice to be able to do my own thing and to go at my own pace and know that I can use the tube by myself. I really enjoyed it and was able to rely a bit more on my mobility skills. My younger brother was very impressed. He said to me, 'Will you ever be coming back to the house now that you can do the tube by yourself?' I said, 'Yeah, of course I will.' He is only five, so it doesn't take much to impress him. For me, it's a real bonus. I think it just makes me realize that actually, I can do things without help, and I think it also makes other people realize that I'm not a young boy anymore. I'm growing up, and at the end of the day, in two years, I'm going to be at uni. Ultimately, I want to get to Cambridge. That would be my dream. I suppose the sooner I gain independence, the more confident I'll be in general as a person, and therefore, the more likely it is that I'll do well in future life. He will more often than not hold on to my arm when we're walking around. Quite often, I will say to him, 'No, just use your cane. I'll be here, but you go off and you do it,' and just giving them that bit of a push sometimes to go and do it because the reward at the end of it, which means that ultimately, they can go off and commute completely independently without having to rely on somebody else doing it all the time. I think that's a great gift you can give to your child, and if they then feel they have the confidence to carry on doing it as well. It's always nervous doing it the first time by yourself; it's always nerve-wracking, so you're always going to feel that feeling: 'Am I going to get lost? Am I going to get hurt? If I do get lost, is someone going to be able to help me?' And the answer is always yes. Make sure you've got some mobility training beforehand, and then just go for it. Don't hold back because you'll need to gain independence someday, and why not make it now? Just over £1,000 a year pays for one-to-one work so a teenager like Josh can learn vital new routes and develop his independence.