The optic nerves at the back of my eyes are smaller than they should be. At first when I was little, my parents were told that I had a cast in my eye or something and then they found out that I was totally blind and not going to get my sight back. I can see light and dark but that’s about it. I can’t see colours or anything else like that.

It affects my life in quite a number of ways because there’s things I’ve wanted to do and I’ve been told you can’t do this or that because you can’t see. Particularly when I was coming up to leaving school. I would have liked to have gone into something like social work or maybe teaching.

Living independently at Beacon basically means that I’m free to live my own life and have some form of a normal life, to be in control of my life, to be able to make my own decisions. That’s what it means to me.

Being in a bungalow is very helpful to me because it’s all on one floor – it means that I don’t have to go up and down any stairs and I’ve got access to everything on one level. The kitchen is small and very compact but it suits all of my needs because I’m the only person living here, so for me it works out quite well.

At Beacon there’s always people there so if I need any advice or anything I can always go and have a chat with one of the carers if I need it.