Tag / blindness

by Yumnah Jones

Oluwakemi Odusanya

Oluwakemi Odusanya, founder of Eagle’s Voice International for Disability Rights

Oluwakemi Odusanya, the founder of Eagle’s Voice International for Disability Rights is driven by her personal experience of living with a visual impairment. She is a disability-rights advocate, a freelance journalist, and holds a Master’s degree in Public and International Affairs. with aspirations to empower many blind women in Nigeria. Her story shows us that a disability can also be acquired and is not simply limited to birth, and that as human beings, we should always be cognizant of the fact that a disability can strike, anyone, at any given moment.

This is Oluwakemi’s story …

“This cannot happen to my child! We don’t have this disease in our lineage!”

My father’s words of anger, aggression and fear, was inflicted on my mother while she hid her pain beneath her beautiful smile, I was confused and wept myself to sleep every night. Little did I know that this was only the start of a new beginning.

Everything changed, in our lives, when at the age of 9 years, I tried to light a matchstick, to prepare dinner for our family. While I lit the matchstick, its particles entered my left eye causing me to feel dizzy and blurring my vision. My parents, thinking it was stress, tried to treat my situation with home remedies.

However, my vision only deteriorated with time, and four years later, my parents received the shocking diagnosis, that I have a retinal detachment in my right eye. My parents were initially shocked and in complete denial but being the eldest of four children and especially my father’s favourite, it was very painful for him to accept my condition but despite the emotional roller-coaster, my parents sought out professional treatment.

After several surgeries and a financial drain, I subsequently made the decision to discontinue with surgeries as there was no hope of recovery and I was tired of treating my eyes with surgical knives. I watched my life unravel, from what I knew it before and what it became after the incident. My self-esteem was at a very low point, my education came to a halt, my classmates deserted me and even my closest family members, my cousins, distanced themselves from me. It was very isolating while everyone pretended that everything would be alright.

At the failure of modern medicine, my parents took me to several herbal doctors, who made me bathe in the river, eat in the jungle, and drink concoctions, all in a bid to restore my sight but to no avail. A friend of my mother then advised her to enrol me in the Pacelli School For The Blind & Partially Sighted Children. It was at this respected school and rehabilitation centre, that I received the necessary skills training and education that facilitated my integration back into mainstream society. While my mother was supportive throughout my transition, it deeply bothered my father.

Wracked with guilt, he could not accept my blindness and would often have intense fights with my mother about it. He wanted my mother around me all the time, to shelter me, and would be mad if, for instance, she arrived home late from the market, as he told her she need to babysit me at all times. All these altercations lowered my confidence, and most times, I wanted to escape from the chaos at home but my mother forged ahead and ensured that I become independent.

After completion of secondary school, I enrolled for a degree in Mass Communication at the University of Lagos. During my studies, I realized that there were only a few women, with disabilities, in university and the reasons were because some could not use the computer independently while others were battling with accepting their disabilities. To prevent myself from becoming a frustrated and lonesome blind woman, I decided to participate in every available activity on campus.

During my second year, I developed a sensitization programme for the university’s campus radio, which aimed to change the mindset and perceptions on disabilities. As a result, my self-confidence increased and communication skills improved. However, the opportunity to join the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) in Nigeria, after graduation, was a liberating experience.

The National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) is a one-year mandatory service for Nigerian graduates, not older than 30 years, where they are expected to work in a social organization, in line with their studies, but outside of their respective states. Being born and raised in Lagos State, I was posted to Zamfara State, in the Northern parts of Nigeria, a whole 24-hour bus ride from home. Now imagine a blind girl travelling solo, no parents or siblings to protect her or friends to guide her.

Being in the comforts of my home and familiar surroundings, my whole life, this opportunity to explore came at such a great time where I was learning more about my own capabilities. The solo experience strengthened my mobility skills, gave me the confidence to travel alone, and helped me to improve my communication skills and self-resilience. I realized every girl and woman, with a disability, should be given the opportunity, to travel, to discover herself. After three weeks on campground in Zamfara State, I was redeployed to Lagos State for better accessibility and to begin my primary place of assignment at a radio station.

My path from a sighted young girl to a woman, with a visual impairment, which was shaped and inspired by my mother’s unrelenting support and unconditional love, motivated me to want to create a space of change for young women, such as myself, who were not given the opportunities I was given. In 2022, Eagle’s Voice International for Disability Rights was established to equip blind women in Nigeria with basic 21st century skills, to enable them to be self-resilient and to attain leadership roles in media, politics and corporate society. Our vision is to see blind women as active drivers in the Nigerian economy and a Nigerian society that both respects and values visually-impaired women as contributing citizens.

Eagle’s Voice International for Disability Rights, since it inception, participated in many projects and activities. In 2023, we partnered with the Nigeria Association of the Blind, to provide 2-month training to empower ten blind and partially sighted women, in the Lagos metropolis, with computer orientation, community awareness and mobility skills. We also collaborated with non-governmental organizations (NGOs), in Lagos, to organize workshops and seminars, that equipped blind women with essential skills in communication, critical thinking and technical proficiency.

Currently, we are upscaling the leadership skills training project with support of the pollination project, at the University of Lagos, by training twenty blind and partially sighted women, including men, with skills in computer proficiency, communication and emotional intelligence, and orientation and mobility. The training commenced in January 2024 and will conclude in April 2024. The projects and activities have expanded our knowledge and made us aware of a much greater need and capacity to train more women with visual impairments and to demystify the negative perception of people with disabilities.

Although impact can never be measured, many participants have been greatly impacted by our projects and activities, inspiring them in becoming more confident and daring in their aspirations and maximization of their potential. Sensing and watching them bloom is always such a pleasure for everyone involved and we want more of this impact to the extent that we see more people with disabilities in the ministerial sphere of society, where no blind and visually impaired person has ever ventured within Nigerian society. More people with disabilities at the top-tier of society consequently means more impact and positive change for their fellow beings at grassroot level. With this in mind, every action and thought of Eagle’s Voice International for Disability Right is governed by this purpose.

When reflecting on my growth and development and thinking on the different, yet well-meaning, parenting styles of both my parents, I am immensely grateful that even if my father did not initially agree with my mother’s decisions, that she stood her ground in exposing me to the outside world. Any parent want to protect their children but to shelter a child with disabilities will not benefit any such child in the long run. It is best to emphasize on their developments, yet at the same time, to be respectful of their limitations, in helping them navigate their surroundings. Being assertive in their growth is not the same as tough love, because tough love without respect is damaging to their growth.

Thus, the same analogy can be used in dealing with and including people with disabilities in society. To possess disabilities does not automatically equate someone to being incompetent or incapable. The best gift a parent, an organization or society can offer them is to expose children and people with disabilities to educational advancement, skills-training and empowerment projects that will facilitate their integration into and contribution towards mainstream society. 

If you are interested in learning more about Oluwakemi or would like to get in contact with her, please reach out via her website eaglesvoice.org, her Facebook page, Eaglesvoice_ng, or email her at kemiodusanya1@gmail.com.

by Yumnah Jones

Anel Coetzee

Anel Coetzee, founder of the South African Visually Impaired Community (SAVIC)

Anel Coetzee, the founder of SAVIC, is a legal advisor and a former attorney. Her journey to finding her niche has been no easy feat and was fraught with tremendous challenges because of the unbending nature of society to reject that which is deemed different. Her story shows us that with the right support, we can all become contributing citizens of the World and that we should never underestimate the power of the slightest gesture of support as it can facilitate and alleviate the struggles of others as they go about their daily lives.

This is  Anel’s story …

I can feel the cool metal of the railing surrounding my balcony, with my fingertips. I can hear the sounds of moving vehicles and people going about their daily lives, eight floors beneath me. It smells like rain, but for the moment, the sun warms my face, and it is a beautiful day. I know what beauty feels like, I know what it sounds like, and I know it is something that can be experienced by all of our senses, but I do not know what it looks like. In fact, I do not know what anything looks like. In my world, there are only shapes and shadows in which days are either blurred or too bright, with many moving objects and no colours. 

In 1992, I was born in Johannesburg, South Africa with a condition known as Congenital Rubella Syndrome (CRS). It is a condition that occurs when the rubella virus, German measles, in the mother affects the developing baby. There are a myriad of complications associated with CRS but in my case, it affected my retinas.  With damaged retinas and no available cure, I have had to navigate the world depending largely on my other senses.  

Growing up, my childhood was, by all accounts, normal. Apart from some minor adjustments like teaching me to use my remaining senses to accomplish certain tasks, my father, a businessman, and my mother, a teacher, ensured that I, just like my sighted siblings, live an active life. I learnt to ride a bicycle, played hide-and-seek with the neighbourhood children, made my own bed (when I was reminded to), and spent my school holidays climbing trees and swimming in my grandparents’ dam.

Since I could not attend mainstream school with my sisters, I was sent to Prinshof School, a school for visually impaired children. While completing my formative education, I met other children with disabilities who became my friends, for life. However, this educational system, where disabled children are isolated from society and their families, would ultimately become one of the greatest challenges later in my life, because it did not prepare me for life outside the carefully designed and adapted world in which I grew up in.

Through Prinshof, I received a good education, learnt braille and participated in other curricular activities such as the school choir and piano lessons. However, the school did not offer a broad spectrum of sporting activities. With this in mind, my parents decided to enrol me in acrobatic gymnastics after my eldest sister introduced me to it.

With my visual impairment and my love for Barbie’s, I first learnt acrobatic gymnastics through a gymnastic doll. The doll became the tool used to show me how to perform various acrobatic tricks, as I would feel where the doll’s arms and legs were positioned, and then copied those movements with my own body. I practiced this for hours on end and to my astonishment, realized that I was really good at it. I loved walking on my hands, doing back walkovers and challenging myself to what I could do. My introduction to acrobatic gymnastics was “love at first pointed toe” to the extent that I started to participate in competitions, outside of school grounds. Through this exposure. I was starting to become aware that the world was not designed for people with disabilities and that it was up to me to advocate for my individual needs since fellow competitors complained that I was given preferential treatment because the judges pitied me.  It was for the first time in my life that I learnt that perception matters and that it often matters far more than reality.

Consequently, my dance teacher would enrol me without disclosing my disability and the ramification of this was that I could not ask for reasonable accommodation. Thus, prior to the competition period, my parents would take me to the location of competitions to teach me the layout of the stage and to show me where the judges and the audience would be seated. Determined to prove my naysayers wrong, I put in a lot of effort and practice. Finally, in 2002, at the age of 10, I won the South African National Acrobatics Championships in my category, where I was one of approximately eighteen participants, but the only dancer with a disability.

In 2010, I matriculated and decided to pursue a career in law. I registered for a LLB degree at the University of the Free State and in January 2011, my mother and grandmother dropped me off at campus, a five-hours’ drive from home. I was super excited about the new adventures that lay ahead and was eager to start my university lectures.


At 18 years of age and having already experienced my fair share of discrimination and bullying, I thought if I left my white cane at home (which Mom later sent to me within my first month of arrival. What was I thinking right?) and pretended to not have a disability, I would have a better chance of blending in with the crowd and making new friends. But alas, 2011 was the year that I realized how dismally my country has failed me by not providing inclusive education. All of a sudden, I went from a classroom of five learners to a lecture hall of 500 students, with no reasonable accommodation.

Campus life was a challenge as both lecturers and fellow students had no idea how to accommodate or behave around a visually impaired person. Neither did I receive the appropriate orientation and mobility training to navigate the campus. There were also many other disabled students and a limited capacity to timeously convert my textbooks into braille. In most cases, I did not receive my books in time for test and exam preparations and had to write from knowledge acquired during lectures. I subsequently failed my first year and  when I started over, in my second year of university, I started to learn how to use a computer and screen reader and switched from braille study materials to electronic study materials (e-books), which were not very popular at that time.

For most of my able-bodied peers, living in residence with me, the prospect of attending university, was exciting, and their biggest concern was coping with an increased course load and not being awoken by the early morning calls of their parents. As a disabled person, I had to contend with a lack of accessible study materials, a lack of awareness, inaccessible lectures and having to learn to cook for myself and doing my own laundry. It was overwhelming, and the volume of work which included study guides, textbooks and case law was more reading than I have ever done but I pushed ahead.

During the period of my studies, I have acquired so much knowledge on legal subject matters  but the most valuable lessons I have learnt were about myself. On countless occasions, I have wandered unknowingly into male lavatories, approached store mannequins for assistance, walked into doors and knocked over spectacles from people’s faces trying to feel for a seat on trains. I am no stranger to embarrassment and the older I get, the less these incidents hurt my pride. Although I did not blend in and still experienced bullying and ignorance, I chose to not let the actions of others define me. I went on to graduate with an LLB from UFS and completed my articles of clerkship before becoming a practicing attorney.

Securing a job after the completion of my studies was extremely difficult because I was blind and without a driver’s licence. When some of the law firms realized I was visually impaired, I was instantly rejected after initial consideration. Eventually, I was employed by a law firm in Johannesburg and gained valuable experience, but the career path was very taxing as I constantly had to prove myself to clients. Most of my colleagues knew I was capable and competent, and with their guidance and mentorship, I was able to accomplish my tasks, attend meetings and prepare for and appear in court.   However, the unfortunate reality was that most of my working time were spent with strangers and because I am a disabled woman, I was deemed incapable and was treated with condescension.

As an attorney, is it integral to have a good clientele but as a blind attorney, it was difficult to build up a clientele. After five years in practice, and with the firm’s helpful transition from an archival filing system to a paperless system, I reached my personal goals through hard work and consistent effort and was, by society’s standards, successful. Successful, but not happy … I thought that after becoming an attorney, I would finally receive the respect that I have always yearned for as a human being, living with a visual impairment, but despite my accomplishments, that were recognized, I was never fully regarded as an equal. It was a mental health struggle, for me, and time for a change.

In due course, I found work as a legal advisor at a company that tremendously improved the quality of my life, because for the first time, my abilities mattered more than my disability. I am not a visually impaired legal advisor; I am a legal advisor that is competent, capable and hardworking. I am seen as an equal, functioning individual of the greater society. Fortunately for me, this is my current path, but not many disabled individuals can say the same. They continue to walk a path, in society, that praises them when they succeed in a world that is not designed for them yet fails to accommodate them with opportunities to integrate and contribute. Societal barriers are the greatest hurdle for disabled individuals to overcome and through first-hand experience, I can vouch that if disabled individuals are surrounded by people who actively remove these societal barriers, then their disability will not be an issue.

While I enjoy my career and the challenges it presents, my heart will always be with the disabled community. When I am not at work, I spend my time creating awareness, along with my canine companion, on  disabilities but particularly on visual impairments and guide dogs. I share my story in the hopes that it will encourage disabled people to step outside of their comfort zones and reach for their dreams. I also try to destigmatize the myths and misperceptions on disabilities.

For many years, I have felt that the visually impaired community is disconnected and that although we face similar obstacles and challenges, we tend to waste our time and resources by trying to solve our problems, individually. As a result, I started to research practical and accessible ways  that would unite the visual impaired community. 

Earlier this year, in 2022, I launched an online platform, called the South African Visually Impaired Community (SAVIC) on Discord. The purpose of SAVIC is to create a single platform and sense of community where visually impaired  South Africans can find all the resources available to discuss the different career paths chosen, to provide information on employment and bursary opportunities and to share insights on accessible living. SAVIC is a resourceful community, consisting of 41 members, with a lot of expertise. Currently, we host events on topics ranging from access to justice, accessible traveling and new technologies. Going forward, my vision for SAVIC, is that it can be used to identify and rally, as a collective, against instances of discrimination. We are looking to expand our networks and have created a Facebook group that is open to any interested visually impaired person, and their families.

I may be classified as disabled, but I am more than that. I am a sister, a friend, a partner, a professional and an animal lover. My lack of sight does not define me in these roles. My disability moulded me into a resilient and empathetic person, it taught me patience and to find the humour in every situation, but it will never prevent me from living a fulfilling life.

If you are interested in learning more about Anel or would like to get in contact with her, please reach out via her Facebook page, Life after blindness or email her at coetzee.anel@gmail.com. If you are visually impaired and would like to know more about SAVIC, you can join her Facebook Group, SAVI Community.