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Hannah: My name is Hannah Matin. I am 18 years old.
I was born with eye cancer in both of my eyes which resulted in my left eye being removed
and I only have around 10 per cent vision remaining in my right eye.
Sima: My name is Sima and I'm Hannah's mum. It was
very difficult when she started the primary school. Then they started helping her to learn
to touch type and then she had help with her all the time when she was younger so she started
progressing a lot and she started catching up with the rest of the class.
Hannah: I first started using my iMac computer when
I was 12 years old which was around the second year of high school. I have this technique
that I do where my hand is constantly on the shift key and my hand's constantly on the
mouse and I'm zooming in and out to everything to what I need it to be. It was particularly
useful for research projects, essays and during my GCSEs it was very useful when I was doing
my science and English coursework. I was very worried about how I would manage when I reached
A levels because I was getting a lot of support. So this is when TAs at my school started to
explore using scanners to adapt material to a much larger font.
While they were doing this, during the time that they would have been in lessons with
me I would be working independently in my lessons with the material that they had adapted
for me.
I first started using my electronic reader halfway through my A levels because I was
starting to suffer from severe eye dryness which was making it pretty much impossible
for me to read the material that I had to, to get the revision done.
It would take a photograph of the page and then would read out what is written on the
page so that you would not have to read it yourself.
Sima: It became so bad that she could not anymore
read and I had to read out to her several times a day. Once she got the reader everything
just changed for her because she could just sit in her own comfort and put her textbooks
and listen to what was in the book and she would repeat it several times until she learned
it.
Hannah: Finding the right method and equipment for
me to use during my A levels made a huge impact on my final results. During my GCSEs I achieved
Bs and Cs. However when I reached A levels at the end I came out with an A*, an A and
a B. At the moment I'm taking a gap year and starting September 2014 I will be studying
politics at Queen Mary University London and I'm really looking forward to it.
RNIB, supporting blind and partially sighted people.
