StemCell Therapy

Most blind people have some light perception but I'm one of the 2pc that have total darkness. I was born with retinoblastoma, an extremely rare cancer of the eye, and by four months old, both my eyes had been removed.

My parents had a fruit farm in Kildare and when I was born in the mid 1970s, there was no internet, no support groups.

I think they did not know what approach to take and so decided to treat me exactly the same as my younger twin sisters. They worked tremendously hard and everyone had to pitch in; blindness was no excuse. Their work ethic rubbed off on me, and I could not imagine a life without work.

The profit mentality

I left a secure and pensionable job with the National Council for the Blind (NCBI) to set up the Irish operations of Sight and Sound Technology, a 40-year-old company that provides hardware and software for the blind, visually impaired, and for people with learning and reading difficulties.

People told me I was insane and questioned would a British company remain in Ireland post-Brexit. But one year on, there are not enough hours in the day for me to keep up with the work.

I had worked in the technology area in the NCBI, so I knew there was a market here.

My main motivation is to provide a quality product that can help people, and I don't want to lose my values. It is hard to balance with the pressure that a profit has to be made for the shareholders.

Learning curve

The first two months were tricky. I had spent 17 years surrounded by colleagues and suddenly it was just me. I was walking 40 minutes to sit in an empty office and bang out emails to tell people who we were. I confided my difficulties to my boss and he told me I could arrange my working life any way I preferred.

So now I work from home, and come into the office when meeting people, and we have hired someone to help with admin. My mental health is better working from home. I go to a lot of events and travel quite a bit anyway, on average three times a month to the UK.

Usability is key

What we do is integrate specialist solutions into mainstream technology, to make it more accessible for the blind, visually impaired, and those with learning and reading difficulties.

I have a braille keyboard with the usual commands of a regular keyboard. I will either listen to my emails, or else use a refreshable braille display, that shows a series of pins raised and lowered. I can also plug in this braille display to my phone or my Kindle.

Zoom text magnification software and background readers are lifelines for those with impaired sight, and now applications read verbally from the screen in high-quality synthetic speech - which is crucial.

I have proved to be great quality control. Although I can read graphs in braille, I was finding that the most difficult part of my job was interpreting financial data with lots of figures and spreadsheets. Up until then, my colleagues did not have a blind person working as their equal, so it has been helpful in pinpointing where we need to improve usability. No matter how good technology is, it has to be easy to use, otherwise it's useless.

Advance schmoozing

I've learned that the trick with networking at conferences is to do most of my schmoozing beforehand. I will get a list of who is going and try to build a rapport by email before I go.

My phone is useful when looking for a person. I will ask at the desk to check who has registered and then can send a message to say I will be at this stand at 10.30am.

I'm really specific, but there is subtlety; I make it look seamless.

Otherwise, people say 'great, see you there', but I'm never going to spot someone across a room and I have to make it concrete.

Everyone has their own perceptions of their world as they know it. In an ideal world, all would be treated equally, and there is no doubt that society is getting better. The technology is improving, and getting cheaper, all the time and I'm hoping in time there will be more employment opportunities for the blind.

Compartmentalising

Myself and my fiance (Paralympian Nadine Lattimore) had our son Adam six months ago. This has thrown a grenade into my work-life balance; it is the biggest challenge I have faced and I have not yet got it right.

I do find it difficult to stop working and find myself sending emails with Adam on my lap. I just dislike putting off until tomorrow what I can do today.

It can be challenging for a blind person to find accessible fitness activities, but I've started walking more, with Adam strapped to my chest in the baby carrier.

Living your life

Nadine lost her sight 14 years ago and I do feel that growing up blind from birth, I have had an easier time of it.

My reality is normal for me. If I was offered sight back, I'm not sure what I would do. I think about this question a lot. It would be a huge disruption and throw my life right out of kilter.

People always ask how we manage with a newborn. But looking after a baby is such a tactile process; we have had no problems, it's been a joy. I know I have a higher risk of getting cancer again but I don't give it much thought; my life is to be lived now and it's a wonderful one.

Indo Business

Visit link:
'Everyone had to pitch in on the farm, blindness was no excuse' - Independent.ie

This entry was posted on November 12, 2019 at 4:48 pm and is filed under Blindness. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed. |