How Northamptonshire blind charity is supporting visually-impaired people during the coronavirus lockdown

Northamptonshire Association for the Blind (NAB) has been working hard during the coronavirus lockdown to make life easier for visually-impaired people.

The charity has been working with dance teachers to make their at-home workouts audio-described and organising quizzes over Zoom.

Hugh Spence, who is blind and works for NAB, believes the pandemic has made some things harder for the visually-impaired but has also presented new opportunities.

"Lockdown has been hard but with a lot of these things, hopefully we're making social isolation a little bit better for for the visually-impaired community," the 28-year-old from Northampton said.

NAB, which celebrates its 125th anniversary next year, supports around 5,000 visually-impaired people in the county.

For blind and visually-impaired clients, the lockdown and isolation makes them 72 per cent more at risk of mental health problems, depression, anxiety and suicidal thoughts, according to the charity.

Hugh said most of its services revolved around going into people's homes but that has been suspended so they are having to adapt and use technology to continue their support.

"The virus is horrible but it's given me and NAB a chance to do things differently and a lot of this is going to carry on when this virus goes away," he said.

At-home exercise and dance videos have boomed during the lockdown but many of them are not accessible for visually-impaired people as they do not explicitly explain each movement.

So NAB contacted Step by Step dance school in Northampton to make an audio-described video, which has gone down well on social media, according to Hugh.

"A lot of visually-impaired people have said they weren't dancers at all before this but have used it as it's one of the only audio-described ones out there," he said.

"We had our first visually-impaired pub quiz the other night too and the feedback for that was great. It was only half an hour but it cheered a lot of people up."

Leaving the house can be particularly challenging for visually-impaired people, with canes being less than two metres long and guide dogs not been trained in social distancing.

Hugh tends to stay at home and relies on his parents for shopping because he would not want to make anyone feel uncomfortable if he accidentally came close to them.

But he believes people are generally courteous and supermarkets are helping where they can, especially by considering visually-impaired people 'vulnerable' and giving them priority delivery slots.

"It's obviously a very scary situation for everyone but for visually-impaired people who are self-isolating anyway, it's making them more socially-isolated," he said.

"But with people's flexibility and understanding it's getting better and will continue to improve."