NEWSLETTER No. 370

Dying doesn’t normally give a person new life – yet that is exactly what happened to Patrick Charnley. He was a high-flying lawyer, who viewed downtime as “wasted time”, restlessly pushing himself to success. But working long hours during the pandemic in 2021, the ultra-fit father-of-two suffered a cardiac arrest aged 39. The journey to today’s acceptance has been deeply traumatic.”I woke up blind,” says Patrick of his first waking memory. “I was experiencing these things, but not really connecting with them.”

Read this remarkable story here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0jvxwvdy4zo

For Grace, 25 at the time of writing, volunteering isn’t just a pastime; it’s about building a better, more inclusive world. Already a passionate advocate for accessibility and inclusivity, her ability to reflect on her experiences has given many teams within RNIB important insight. Using her lived experience and positive drive, she is helping to shape services, support others, and challenge perceptions.

‘I’m one of those really progressive people’ Grace shares, ‘I believe everyone has the right to access the world in the way that works for them.’ That belief led her to RNIB, where she first got involved through the Connect Voices group as a member and later saw an opportunity to get involved as a volunteer, ‘I’m really interested in co-production, inclusivity, accessibility, and advocacy. The opportunity was to help with moderating RNIB’s main Connect Voices Facebook group, to help with making it a safer and more friendly community. There could also be the opportunity to look at content before it is posted on the group and make sure it is accessible, which really played to my heart. I just thought this would be fantastic.’

From there, her volunteering experience quickly blossomed into a wide-ranging volunteering journey. Today, alongside her Facebook Moderator role, Grace is involved in multiple roles that cover reviewing and building communication resources for people living with sight loss and for volunteers; helping to improve the volunteer experience through the Volunteer Advisory Council; and sharing lived experience feedback.

‘I’ll turn my hand to anything where I think I can help’ and she means it: Grace also volunteers with her former high school, an orchestra, as well as other local and national sight loss charities, and somehow finds time for it all. ‘I look at it and I think, ‘I’m born blind I can either sit at home and whine or I can fill my life with opportunities to make those things better’’.

Read the full story here: https://www.rnib.org.uk/news/volunteering-is-about-shaping-the-world-you-want-to-live-in-now/

Fight for Sight are funding research to better understand, diagnose, prevent, and treat age- related macular degeneration. But what is it, and why is it important that we tackle this condition, which causes vision loss?

Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is the UK’s leading cause of vision loss in people over 50. It affects the macula — the part of the eye that helps us see fine detail, recognise faces and read. 600,000 people in the UK have vision loss caused by age-related macular degeneration. This number is expected to more than double by 2050.

There are two main types of AMD: Dry AMD – the more common form. It develops slowly as light-sensing cells in the retina stop working properly; and Wet AMD – less common, but more severe. Abnormal blood vessels grow under the retina and leak fluid, damaging central vision.

Read the full article here: https://www.fightforsight.org.uk/news-and-insights/news/research-blog/what-is-age-related-macular-degeneration-and-how-can-we-better-understand-and-treat-it/

Accessible train travel is essential for blind and partially sighted people to live independently, get to work, visit friends and family, and access healthcare. Yet, RNIB’s new report, Platform for Change: Making rail journeys more accessible for people with sight loss, shows that too many journeys are still impacted or prevented by unnecessary barriers such as inconsistent passenger assistance, difficult ticket buying methods and the inaccessible design of trains and stations.

The Platform for Change report is based on a survey of nearly 1,200 blind and partially sighted people across the UK, alongside focus groups. The findings are clear: more than one in three people with sight loss can’t make the train journeys they want or need to. Each aspect of train travel can be inconsistent and stressful. Only 44 per cent said that they are reliably met by assistance staff, and 82 per cent said they struggle with the gap between the train and platform edge.

2025 marked 200 years of the railway in Britain, and yet, even after so much time, the system regularly misses opportunities to meet the needs of passengers at each stage of the journey: from planning travel to buying tickets, navigating stations and trains, or interacting with staff for the assistance that is so often essential in completing a journey.

Read the full story here: https://www.rnib.org.uk/news/platform-for-change-new-rnib-report-reveals-barriers-to-accessible-train-travel-for-blind-and-partially-sighted-people/

First Direct and Nationwide have cemented themselves as accessibility champions once again. Both came out on top in the Which? 2023 and 2021 surveys of disabled customers too.

First Direct received the highest customer score of the 13 current account providers rated by some margin, with 88%. One customer of 30 years, who is severely sight impaired, rates its five- star telephone banking service above all else, telling us: ‘Staff are always helpful and efficient. It’s probably the only organisation with which I have no problem with my disability.’ Second-placed Nationwide (78%) continues to win over customers who prefer face-to-face banking. Its promise to keep all 605 of its branches open until at least the start of 2030 has been hugely popular,
bucking the industry trend.

At the other end of the other end of the scale, TSB, NatWest and Virgin Money did not fare so well. Virgin Money had the highest proportion of customers rating it as ‘poor’ or ‘very poor’ for online banking (20%) and mobile banking (16%).

For telephone banking, HSBC took the unwanted crown for highest proportion (20%) of customers rating it as ‘poor’ or ‘very poor’, while Bank of Scotland was at the bottom of the pile for branch banking (29%).

Disabled bank customers told Which? they face significant physical and digital hurdles that can make managing their finances a challenge.

Read the full report here: https://www.which.co.uk/news/article/the-accessibility-gap-is-your-bank-raising-the-bar-for-disabled-customers-aDRbd6r8yzCV?

An airport has hosted a training session for guide dog puppies for the very first time.

The session was run by the charity Guide Dogs at Southampton Airport, Hampshire, to get the puppies used to the sights, sounds and smells of a working airport as part of their preparation to become future guide dogs. The puppies toured different areas, including the baggage carousel, duty-free and the departure lounge, with their puppy raisers and were rewarded for behaving calmly and ignoring distractions. During the session the dogs encountered many new challenges, including the stairs in and out of a plane, which puppy raiser Simon Wallenburg said were “very different” to what they are used to, such as the ones in Westquay Shopping Centre in Southampton.

Read the full story here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c3wl5xnvzp4o