Following on from yesterday’s post about the V&A Museum, I want to tell you about another museum I visited recently for an audio described tour.
The Wellcome Collection is a museum that focuses on health, life, science and medicine, looking at what it means to be human. I went there a few times with the family when I was very young, although I have no clear memories of it. I just remember it was a place that we really enjoyed. So when I saw that VocalEyes had organised an audio described tour at the museum, I happily signed up.
The Victoria & Albert (V&A) Museum is one of the most well-known and exciting museums in the city, because of the huge variety of fascinating historical objects it holds in its many galleries. So it was one of the places I was really looking forward to visiting when I moved to London.
I first visited the museum, and had a little tour of a few exhibits, back in April with the social group Thinking Bob. But last Sunday I returned to look at a room in one of their big exhibitions in detail.
I had chosen to explore the Europe 1600-1815 exhibition, partly because it’s easy to find next to the main entrance, and also because it had some accessibility features I wanted to try out. And this was a particularly good opportunity to visit, because I had agreed to be monitored for a research project.
A wonderful lady called Rafie Cecilia is conducting a very interesting PhD study into accessibility at museums for blind and partially sighted people, and I was only too happy to help her out, as visiting museums is one of the things I really enjoy doing. So I met her at the V&A and, after an initial chat to confirm my consent for the study, she attached some non-intrusive and comfortable equipment to me, before sending me off to explore while she watched discreetly nearby.
Hello again, welcome to my latest Favourites roundup. Once again it’s a varied package, with some disability blog posts and events, a museum tour, no less than three musicals, another outing with Fashioneyesta, my first trip to a Lush store, the delights of the Lord Mayor’s Show, and more. So I hope you enjoy looking through it al!
Last year I was nominated for the Liebster Award, which was very surprising and flattering considering I was a relatively new blogger at the time. It’s a fun way of showing your fellow blogging friends that you appreciate and enjoy their work, by giving them valuable exposure and promotion.
If you’re nominated, the rules are simply to thank the blogger who nominated you and answer the 11 questions they’ve set you, and then set a list of 11 new questions and nominate 11 other bloggers to respond to them.
And this year I’ve been nominated for the second time, with huge thanks to Holly at Life Of A Blind Girl! Holly recently graduated from university, which is fantastic, so congratulations to her! I remember how wonderful that feeling is, seems a long time now since my own graduation. Anyway, Holly writes lots of wonderful posts about her experiences being visually impaired, as well as advocating and educating around sight loss and disability, and posting about other things she enjoys too. So do go and check her out, there’s a lot of great stuff to read there.
I’ve been meaning to write my response post for a while, and I’m sorry it’s taken so long. But here are my answers to Holly’s questions, and I hope you enjoy. Thanks again Holly! 🙂
A few of my recent posts about my visual impairment have become very popular, which has been wonderful of course. In large part this is because the RNIB have very kindly shared them, which has enabled them to reach a huge audience.
As a result of those posts, various people have got in touch with questions relating to my conditions. I’ve answered them all either privately or in the comments area they were posted in. But I thought I’d summarise the questions and my responses here as well, in case others find it useful.
So thank you to Sam, Charlotte and Nadine for the questions in this post, I’m happy to help as best I can. And if any of you reading this want to ask me anything about my visual impairment, or anything else for that matter, then feel free to comment here or on my Twitter or Facebook feeds. I’m happy to do more Q&A posts like this if people wish.
So here are the questions and answers, including a video of my responses as well. I hope you find it interesting and useful.
In my previous post I wrote about how I plan unfamiliar journeys to make it easier for me – using apps like Citymapper and Google Maps to plan routes, and Street View to virtually walk the routes them. So now I want to take about my actual experience of travelling around in London.
I know that some people find it much harder to travel around London due to more severe visual impairments, other mobility issues, anxiety and confidence issues, and so on. And that’s all perfectly understandable. So this won’t be reflective of everyone’s experiences. It’s just my own account of how I’ve personally settled into it and how I got about things. Your experiences may differ significantly depending on your situation.
It’s also worth noting Transport For London’s Accessibility page as well, as that has lots of info on it that people might find useful if they’re travelling in the city.
So with that out of the way, let’s get on to how I find travelling around London. I’ve also made a video to go with both this and my previous post, so you might like to watch that as well.
I’ve been posting a lot about what I’ve been doing in London, but I haven’t talked much about how I actually get around such a big city. I did discuss it in a post I did last year when I visited London with a friend, and briefly when I visited Sight Village in 2016, before I actually lived here. But now I’ve been a resident here for a while, and as new followers have asked about it recently, now’s a good opportunity to revisit the topic in more detail. So I’m going to split this over a couple of posts, starting with how I plan my journeys before I actually do them. Then in my next post I’ll talk about what it’s like travelling around.
I’ve also made a video to go with these posts, which you may like to check out as well.
Hey there, welcome back for another big update on what I’ve been getting up to. As usual it’s been a very busy month, as I’ve enjoyed an audio described exhibition and theatre show, a couple of fun tours, events involving lots of chocolate, my first ever afternoon tea, a guest appearance in a special Youtube project on a football field, a craft show in a beautiful setting, a classic scary movie at the cinema, and more. So I hope you find this compilation interesting as usual!
Today is Nystagmus Awareness Day (aka Wobbly Wednesday), set up by the Nystagmus Network here in the UK. Nystagmus is a condition where the eyes shake and move involuntarily all the time, which makes it harder to focus and concentrate on things. It can come as part of the package with other eye conditions or on its own, and it has different levels of severity in different people. So it’s a very varied condition. For a detailed explanation of how it affects me personally, check out my Living With Nystagmus post and video.
To mark the day, I’ve been tagged to answer some questions on nystagmus by Youtuber Jessica King (Jessylrk) – thank you Jessica! And if you have nystagmus too, then I tag you to do this as well. So here are my answers to the questions, and I hope you find them interesting. You can also watch a video of my responses as well.
One of the common misconceptions about those of us with visual impairments is that we have no sight at all. It’s as if some people think eyesight is on or off, like flicking a light switch. I’ve had people assume this about me in the past, and have even had people telling others that I’m blind, because they don’t know how to explain it properly.
But the fact is that 93% of people who are registered partially sighted or blind can see something. Every single visually impaired person sees the world in their own unique way, some better than others. It’s a huge spectrum. So don’t assume that a visually impaired person cannot see at all, because 93% of the time you’ll be wrong.
The RNIB are spreading awareness of this simple fact using their #HowISee campaign. They have been asking people to make short videos about how they see, and this is my contribution. It’s had a big reaction on Twitter and Facebook already, so please do feel free to share it and help spread the message.
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