Category Archives: Blindness and visual impairment

‘Nothing unusual’ about blindness non-profit Vision Australia being led by someone who isn’t blind, chair says

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Bill Jolley says he was ‘a bit surprised at the intensity of the reaction’ after ex-chair Graeme Innes launches petition calling for appointment of blind CEO

A non-blind person leading Vision Australia is “nothing unusual”, its chair has said, as the organisation faces criticism for seeking a new chief executive through internal expressions of interest only.

Bill Jolley’s comments come in the wake of a petition launched by Vision Australia’s founding chair, the former disability discrimination commissioner Graeme Innes, urging the organisation to appoint its first blind chief executive.

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Make this the last inaccessible election for blind people in UK, campaigners demand

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RNIB calls on all parties to commit to remove barriers that prevent people with sight loss voting on their own

Tens of thousand of people with sight loss will be denied their right to a secret ballot at next week’s general election, campaigners have warned, prompting calls to make it the last inaccessible election.

The Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB) is calling on all political parties to commit to remove barriers that prevent blind people voting on their own and without help in future elections.

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Adapted NHS bowel cancer test developed for blind and partly sighted people

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Accessible screening tool piloted by NHS England includes braille instructions and a better guide for stool sample

Thousands of blind or partly sighted people could find it easier to participate in bowel cancer screening from home owing to a new NHS tool aiding accessibility.

The standard test used to screen for bowel cancer requires an at-home stool sample in a tube, which is sent off and examined for any possible cancer signs.

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Blind people in England at risk from ‘shocking’ social care delays, finds report

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At least a quarter of councils are taking more than a year to provide vital support to people with a new visual impairment diagnosis

The lives of thousands of blind and partially sighted people are being put at risk by delays in vital care that they have a legal right to after being assessed as visually impaired, according to a report.

More than a quarter of English councils are leaving people who have just been diagnosed as blind waiting more than a year for vision rehabilitation assessments and potentially life-saving support, the report by the RNIB revealed.

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New headsets bring Wimbledon to life for visually impaired fans

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Device trialled at tournament captures images with camera and projects them into sight line

Rosie Pybus has been to Wimbledon several times and watched her first tennis match this year, thanks to a headset for visually impaired people. She told of the “exhilarating” moment she tested the innovative device, which allows users to watch live action from the stands.

Visually impaired tennis fans at SW19 have been trialling the headsets, which capture images with a camera and project them into a person’s sight line. Users can adjust the images with a remote control.

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Scared of the Dark will help public understand sight loss, says blind contestant

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Chris McCausland says Channel 4 show gave him the experience of ‘being the most able’ competitor

It has recently been called one of television’s most ridiculous reality shows. But the new Channel 4 series Scared of the Dark will help audiences understand sight loss, a contestant has said.

The blind comedian Chris McCausland is one of eight famous faces who stepped out of the spotlight and into a pitch-black bunker for eight days for the experiment, hosted by Danny Dyer. It will show how they cope with the pressures of light deprivation and humanity’s primal fear of the dark.

It’s a Knockout, BBC One, 1966 Giant obstacle-based physical series that spawned a Europe-wide and royal version.

Touch the Truck, Channel 5, 2001 Dale Winton-fronted endurance show featured contestants holding on to a truck for the longest to win it.

Naked Jungle, Channel 5, 2000 A nudist Crystal Maze meets It’s a Knockout, fronted by Keith Chegwin.

Shafted, ITV, 2001 Robert Kilroy-Silk’s ill-fated show created TV’s most infamous catchphrase, “to share or to shaft”.

Celebrity Shark Bait, ITV, 2005 Richard E Grant and Ruby Wax were among the stars locked in a metal cage in shark-infested waters.

Hole in the Wall, BBC One, 2008 Teams of celebrities tried to jump through shapes in a moving wall.

Heads or Tails, Channel 5, 2009 Justin Lee Collins oversaw contestants flipping a coin to try to win £1m.

Don’t Scare the Hare, BBC One, 2011 Contestants carried out a mad series of challenges against a giant robotic hare.

That Puppet Game Show, BBC One, 2013 The Muppets’ short-lived move into gameshows.

The Jump, C4, 2014 Insurance nightmare celebrity ski jump show created 34 casualties.

Flockstars, ITV, 2015 Celebrities attempt sheepdog trials.

Wild Things, Sky One, 2015 Couples dressed as animals competed on a woodland obstacle course.

Apocalypse Wow, ITV2, 2021 Gladiators meets BDSM.

Naked, Alone and Racing to Get Home, Channel 4, 2023 Race Across the World in the buff.

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Laughing all the way to the West Bank: the blind Palestinian comedian tearing down barriers

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Joke by joke, standup sensation Sherihan El Hadwa is challenging lazy stereotypes about victimhood

On a small stage in Tulkarm, a city in the north of the occupied West Bank, Sherihan El Hadwa emerges from the wings to a Palestinian pop song. Dancing and waving the long white cane she uses to navigate the world, the visually impaired comedian already has her audience laughing and clapping along to the music.

Hadwa did not have an obvious route into standup comedy, and the many difficulties of life as a disabled woman in the Palestinian territories are not a straightforwardly humorous topic.

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Bionic eye implant enables blind UK woman to detect visual signals

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Breakthrough offers hope of restoration of sight to people suffering vision loss because of dry AMD

An 88-year-old woman has told of her joy at becoming the first patient in the UK to benefit from a groundbreaking bionic eye implant that enabled her to detect signals for the first time since going blind.

The woman from Dagenham suffers from geographic atrophy. The condition is the most common form of dry age-related macular degeneration (AMD), which affects millions of people worldwide and can cause loss of sight.

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Memories of office life: at 20 and blind, my workmates pranked me mercilessly – and I loved it

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The first time I worked in an office, I was the boss of a group of sceptical youngsters. They looked for my weak spots – then became my first full-sighted friends

My first experience of office life was daunting. You might expect one’s first experience of working in an office environment to be pretty gentle: making the tea, a bit of filing, running errands for the boss. Not a bit of it, in my case. Aged 20, with no experience of office life, I was the boss. And, just to add a little spice to the task, I was totally blind.

My job as a community service volunteer at Youth Action York was to persuade a sceptical group of teenagers to give a helping hand to local elderly or disabled people who were struggling – assisting them with their shopping, perhaps, or tidying up their garden. It felt like a challenge, and my teenage volunteers made sure it was.

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Dennis Billups: he helped lead a long, fiery sit-in – and changed disabled lives

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Blinded by medical intervention as a baby, Billups became one of the leaders of a groundbreaking, world-shaking 1977 protest. He talks about what drives him and why Barack Obama loves his energy

“My mother used to tell us we had to be really good,” says Dennis Billups. “There were always two strikes against us – so you had to hit the third strike out of the park.” The “strikes” were being Black and being blind. And growing up in San Francisco in the 1960s and 70s, both were potential sources of open discrimination. “There were times when, even walking in our own neighbourhood, we would get: ‘You’re supposed to stay inside.’ ‘Don’t you have a dog?’ ‘Don’t you have a cane?’” At times this could turn physical. “Some neighbours would turn water on us and stuff like that.” Finding employment was also a challenge. “Being blind, they didn’t have to do too much except say: ‘We’re not going to hire you,’ or: ‘We don’t think you can do this.’ So it was a glass ceiling, more or less. I’m sure with my twin sister there was a lot more, being a woman, African American and blind as well, but she was a hell of a fighter.”

Billups is a fighter, too, albeit one whose principal weapons are determination, congeniality, optimism – and a mellifluous voice. Now in his late 60s, speaking on Zoom from the San Francisco public library, he still radiates an infectious positivity that helped him as a young man when he played a key role in a lesser-known battle for civil rights.

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‘A very cruel exit’: UK’s aid cuts risk rapid return of treatable diseases

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£200m project to eliminate avoidable blindness and disfigurement in Africa ends after funding is prematurely axed

A chandelier sparkling in the background, the grandeur of Downing Street gleaming behind him, Boris Johnson looks into the camera and speaks with solemnity. He is marking World Neglected Tropical Diseases Day, he says, to raise awareness of these “terrible afflictions … which impose an immense burden of suffering in developing countries”.

Huge progress has been made, he says, in the fight against the diseases, not least as a result of British aid to some of the poorest parts of the world. But there is more – much more – to be done: more than a billion people are still at risk, he warns, and that is why the UK “fully supports” the World Health Organization’s big elimination push over the next decade.

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Comic Jamie MacDonald on being creative and blind: ‘It’s triumph with – not over – adversity’

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In new BBC show Blind Ambition, MacDonald and Jamie O’Leary meet artists who have lost their sight – including a rapper, a photographer and a wood turner ‘who still has all his fingers’

I’m a blind standup comedian, currently co-starring in the BBC Two documentary Blind Ambition. As the title suggests, the show is about blindness. But please don’t think this is a violins, tissues at the ready, “oh didn’t they do well” type of documentary. The show creator and Essex wide boy Jamie O’Leary wanted to make a different kind of show about disability.

You’ll know the classic disabled show formula: person has a dark phase then overcomes their disability and achieves something wonderful. In this paradigm the disability is a hurdle that needs to be jumped over. Or, if there are mobility issues at play, an obstacle to get around. In the Blind Ambition paradigm, blindness – a disability readers of the New York Times voted the worst thing a person could have in the world (which is bollocks as blind people can’t read the flipping New York Times so couldn’t vote) – is positive.

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Ultra-thin film could one day turn regular glasses into night vision goggles, researchers say

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Developed by Australian and European researchers, the film works by converting infrared light into light visible to the human eye

A transparent metallic film allowing a viewer to see in the dark could one day turn regular spectacles into night vision googles.

The ultra-thin film, made of a semiconductor called gallium arsenide, could also be used to develop compact and flexible infrared sensors, scientists say.

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Simple eye care could improve sight of more than 1 billion people – report

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Operation could have corrected vision of many ‘overnight’, while 800 million struggle because they lack access to glasses, according to WHO

More than 1 billion people are needlessly losing their sight because of a lack of simple eye care, according to a landmark report on vision by the World Health Organization.

The research has revealed a wide inequality gap for sight and eye conditions. Rates of blindness in low- and middle-income countries are up to eight times higher than in wealthy countries, with people living in rural areas, ethnic minorities, women and older people suffering disproportionately.

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