After Amanda Foster was born, her mother noticed she wasn’t looking around the room like other babies.
It was not long before doctors discovered she was blind, as her retina and optical nerve had not developed.
It came as a challenge for her family, as they found a lack of support close to home in Aberdeen.
As a result, they had to send her south to boarding school from a very young age.
“I think they did find it difficult, especially at the beginning,” Amanda says.
“The local authority put me to the Royal Blind School in Edinburgh and I left home at four-and-a-half years old.
“It upset my mum when I first went away because she was having to let me go.”
‘Struggling to find a job knocked my confidence’
After leaving school at 18, Amanda returned to the north-east to continue her studies at college.
But despite graduating with a secretarial qualification, she struggled to find any work due to her health condition.
“I tried looking for jobs and wasn’t successful. It can make you lose confidence and get a wee bit depressed.
“It was pretty bad – my confidence wasn’t good anyway.”
It came as a big blow for Amanda who was fully qualified to take on a receptionist role.
But, thankfully, she later found another way to fit into the world and still feel a part of the community.
For the last 20 years, she’s kept herself busy campaigning on behalf of others with disabilities to get better access to services.
“I got into voluntary work and that’s still what I do now,” she explains.
Then she fell in love…
Improvements in technology have helped make life easier for Amanda over the years.
Screen reader software lets her access information and connect with other people.
The device even led to Amanda meeting her husband Richard Foster, who is also blind, and he moved all the way from Sussex to be with her.
They bonded over their love of BBC Radio 4 drama The Archers and met through an online forum for the show.
After several months of emails and phone calls, they eventually met up in person and got married in 2019 at Norwood Hall in Aberdeen.
Amanda said: “He just seemed a lovely person – and I was right, he is.
“We played the Archers music coming down the aisle. It was really good; everyone was laughing.”
Simple barriers fuelling the fight for rights
But although technology may have improved, Amanda still struggles to get access to basic services many of us take for granted.
Even getting her Covid vaccine proved difficult because her letter was sent to her home in print format and she missed an important appointment.
These difficulties fuel her passion to fight for better rights for other disabled people across Scotland.
Amanda trains audio describers making visual productions, such as film and theatre, more accessible for a blind person.
She’s also been involved with many organisations over the years including the RNIB, the Scottish Accessible Transport Alliance and the Poverty Alliance.
Amanda remains positive that employers can still be educated on the benefits of taking on people with disabilities.
Only 27% of working-age blind or partially sighted people are in work in the UK – a statistic that hasn’t changed much in a generation.
They may need additional equipment to help them carry out their work but with the right technology in place are just as capable of doing the job.
‘It’s good to put something back into society’
Her advice for other visually impaired people? Be as positive and as confident as you can be.
And she is keen to highlight that it’s worth getting in touch with the RNIB, a charity that provides support and advice which can help make life easier.
“Even if life is hard try to get involved with as many voluntary organisations as you can because it will give you experience and it might get you into work,” Amanda says.
“It’s my way of putting something back into society and helping people who really don’t have a voice.
“I hope there will be more work for disabled people.
“And I just hope that at some point we might not have to fight for everything.
“It would just be nice not to have to fight every day.”
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