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A FORMER VOICE of Ireland contestant has spoken out about the impact of living with sight loss.
Rebecca Kelly (27), from Ashford in Co Wicklow, was born with a form of macular degeneration.
When she was a baby she was diagnosed with a condition called cone dystrophy, where the eye’s light cells die off slowly from birth.
“This is what I’ve know all my life, I don’t know any different. I think it’s a lot harder for people to be born with full sight and lose it over time,” Rebecca said.
In general, the condition stabilises at around the age of 21. However, for Rebecca it worsened while she was 22 or 23 and attending college.
“I had problems meeting steps and walked into poles I didn’t see. I had to start using a cane. I was in college and doing the independent thing and needed to feel a bit more confident walking around.”
Rebecca said the reading and writing process was slower for her than her classmates but she made it work and graduated with a BA degree in Music from Maynooth University.
Genetic condition
Rebecca’s father and two of her siblings also live with macular degeneration. She said having family members dealing with similar issues is ”really helpful”.
There’s a support network within the family, they know what I’m going through and we can all support each other.
“Four out of six in the family have it. It’s tricky for mam to deal with, but she’s been absolutely brilliant.”
Rebecca has 5% vision. There is no treatment for her condition and she uses visual aids to help her deal with everyday challenges, such as a magnifying glass to help her read and binoculars to see things across the road. She also uses an iPad to takes pictures of things she can’t read, zooming in to see the information.
Voice of Ireland
Despite the obstacles she faces, Rebecca said she refuses to let her condition define her.
Music is a huge outlet for her. She appeared on the Voice of Ireland in 2015, where she got through to the quarter-finals of the televised rounds.
She and her siblings sing together and her father Frank helped set up the Visionaries, a choir for people living with blindness or vision impairment.
“Singing really lifts the spirit, it helps us feel more connected as a family,” she said.
As well as singing, Rebecca plays the piano and the concertina. She also wants to learn the bodrán and the clarinet.
“I like challenging myself, it keeps me busy and takes my mind of the fact I’m visually impaired. Music is my life and it always will be.”
Despite the day-to-day challenges she faces, Rebecca said she’s determined to stay positive.
I need to keep myself upbeat and in the right headspace. It can be so easy to sniff and say, ‘I can’t do that, I can’t do that, I can’t do that. What am I supposed to do with my life?’ There’s still a lot I can do.
For anyone living with visions impairment, she said it’s important to keep busy and seek out activities designed for people with sight loss. “Don’t hide away, the support it there so take it,” she said.
Retina 2018
Approximately 224,000 people in Ireland are living with vision impairment or blindness. Fighting Blindness is today holding a conference in Dublin, Retina 2018, for people affected by sight loss. Experts n the field as well as hundreds of people with a wide range of vision impairments are set to attend.
Former rugby player and Fighting Blindness ambassador Shane Byrne said the event is “a great opportunity to be energised by the experiences of others who have experienced a similar journey and to be inspired by researchers who really are going boldly into the future of vision research”.
Byrne’s grandfather, who was a surgeon, lost his sight and hearing in his early 40s. “He didn’t let it stop him. He went on to become the world’s first visually impaired physiotherapist and had another very successful career,” Byrne recalled.
Retina 2018, supported by Novartis, is being held at the Radisson Blu Royal Hotel in Dublin city today, more information is available here. World Sight Day is due to take place on 11 October, more details are available here.
More information on the services offered by Fighting Blindness can be accessed here.
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€800,000????
@George McCarthy: that’s what it say!
@George McCarthy: paint can be expensive
@SquintEastwood: I’ve just asked the roaming tradesmen i get to clean my drive and they have it down to €800 for all 4 sets. Plus paint and €20 for diesel for the sprayer.
@Brynþór Patrekursson:…. and they’ll kindly drive the OPW to the atm to collect the money too!
@George McCarthy: That’s some Gates Bill.
Can’t be that famous if they have been down /
missing for 3 years and nobody appears to have been that bothered.
No harm to have them back before any bad flooding, I suppose. The last time I drove through there, I was surprised that the gates were even open. Went a different route after seeing cars charging through water and getting bogged down for the night.
Meant to add that now that the eight pairs of gates are restored – presumably done & dusted for this century – they could well look at drainage next. It’s hardly a public park if it isn’t navigable.
Why in the unholy god are we spending 800K on GATES?????
And we still can’t fund Public Health Consultants . . . .
@Mr_Bumkee: keep the gates get rid of the consultants. Their more expensive lol
@Aaron92utd: gates can be opened – public heath are only interested in closing things!
@Mr_Bumkee: It was the health and safety brigade that caused the gates to be removed and damaged(angle grinded off)
There was supposed to be hundreds thousands people at the event but the tickets were shamefully scalped and hoarded preventing those who wanted to go from going.
Would have been fine leaving the gates there.
This is Ireland, where wanton misuse of Public Money is the norm.
It’s takes us 3 years and 800k to rehang a pair of gates. And we think we’ll be vaccinated by June …….. ( look at our vaccine stats by the way , we are with Belgium , we’ll down the field)
In fairness, eight pairs of gates.
This is a joke, 80000.00 thousand for repair to gates, were they made from solid gold, can I get the next job, I would be able to retire after one job.
@Jimmy Mac: You sure can! You’d be retired in no time.
There’s 2 gates lads … so it was only 400k each for a sand and black paint so not too bad ….. I know the deadlines were missed but Aldi sold out of the paint in record time last year so not anyone’s fault.
We have 800,000€ to throw around on gates, millions and billions seemingly to throw around everywhere. So why is it every time we ask the government about housing, healthcare or public transport it’s too expensive or not feasible?
Getting FF/FG out of government will be the best thing that ever happens to this country.
Definitely a slow news day ,other than militant teachers unions
@Gerard Heery: definitely – and all the stories increasingly in the media relatye to the sections of society not financially impacted by Covid at all – unions , public sector , teachers , garda bodies – it’s becoming relentless while the average people feeling the real crunch , struggling with PUP payments to juggle mortgages , job losses and decimated livelihoods are nowhere to be heard – you would have to think the silent majority of decent people are sick to the teeth of official Ireland moaning and squandering as if nothing has happened – the notion that we might review previously approved budgets for gates or anything else is seemingly anthema to them – people wer forced to close perfectly good businesses and livelihoods have been decimated – 80% of jobs in Ireland are from SMES and yet we are fed this daily diet of entitled sections debating who gets to skip vaccines entitlements and how many hundreds of thousands can we squander on first world problems – it beggars belief how out of the touch official Ireland is with the real people in our country.
https://irl.eu-supply.com/ctm/Supplier/PublicPurchase/153086/0/1
Required work is in the document sections. Looks like there’s a lot of custom-made recasts required to replace the damaged/missing parts of the gates. Don’t know how much it would have cost but there’s an awful lot more work involved in the tender than slapping a coat of paint on them.
I hope that sandwiches were provided.
I was reading in another article it is 8 pairs of gates. 100,000 per set is still mental two pillars and a slap of paint
Is there anybody in this country not trying to get over a fast one. 800k to hang gates???? What sort of colleges/universities do we have that educate engineers, quantity surveyors and builders that can come up with this price? Have we not learned anything from the children’s hospital scandal!!!!!
I’m a Metal Fabricator by trade. I know these particular gates.
No way I can see e800k. Absolutely no way. Even to remake every Gate in the Park from scratch. No way.
Someone agreed to the 800k for this …Who , Why and when are they getting the boot as they are clearly incapable of doing their job properly..
@Mike: 100%. Someone signed off on this. Embarassing.
I’m sure Dustin the Turkey would of done the job cheaper but you have to look after heritage professionally and that costs money.
€800,000 to hang a pair of gates!!!
Alll the fines the last year should have covered the cost.
€800,000 for gates ! Makes The Children’s Hospital seem like the bargain of the century.
€800,000K??? Are they made of gold??? Christ
How many tins of Ronseal paint is that?
Comparing to Dáil printer project cost €1.8m
800000 is good price :)
€800K and this was “within budget”. So how much were they budgeting for to have 8 pairs of gates repaired? The fact that they stated that this was “within budget” would make you think that they themselves were expecting a backlash over the cost. Reminds me of when the Trotters went to clean those two priceless Louis XIV crystal chandeliers. Once upon a time the OPW employed people who could lift a paint brush and also do a bit of pointing on a pillar.
Rush job from OPW then.
Pretty fast for the OPW, and only twice the going rate. Amazing.
What’s the odds they are the wrong colour and have to be done again?
Painted with 24 karat gold?
OPW – Official Public Wasters. One of the most dysfunctional public bodies funded by the taxpayer. Need to be revamped and new public procurement practices implemented.
We are wondering how so many projects are so slow to be completed. As they observe public service terms of employment, they are out of synch with the wider practices in the construction industry. Some of the work they do is good but you would not want to be in a hurry.
€800k!! That’s some expensive Hammerite! I might have read the article wrong but is it 7 sets of gates have been repaired and rehung and pillars repaired etc. Just over €100k per entrance. Nice work if you can get it.
If this isn’t del boy and the Paddy I don’t know what is.
Rehung…heh heh heh
Why have Gates in the first place,
O yeah,
To close them,
To who,
O yeah,
CARS ,
A complete CAR ban from the pheno on the way.
Need a good pair of walking shoes,
When the shoe shops open,
Soooo, installed by summer 2022 then?
Michael D needs to secure his fortress of solitude..
What are they the pearly gates
Maybe have a look at last Thursdays RTE Investigates all about the OPW. It’s a bloody disgrace what they have and are still getting away with. The exorbitant amounts of money they have and are still spending on buildings that are still lying idle and others including the HSE building that’s not fit for purpose. So this is no surprise.
Wow 3 years later and huge expense..
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