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Retinitus Pigmentosa: a student perspective. So my condition is called Retinitus Pigmentosa
and that means, it's sort of tunnel vision, it's sort of closes in.
It's degenerative. So when I, well, we only found out almost by accident when I was eight
when I had one of those vision tests at school. They said, oh, we think you might need some
glasses at little bit. So I went and had a test and the ophthalmologist or something
we went to had by chance had done some thesis on what I had as it's not particularly common.
And so he knew what he was doing, and so sent us off to a specialist and we found
out more and more about it. But honestly it didn't have any effect until.
we found out about it when I was 8 until we started looking at adaptive technology and
how to help in the classroom and things when I was about 15 or 16.
So over that time you just notice it occasionally when you walk into things that other people
didn't, but it wasn't really a big deal at all.
So the sort of consequences are you get tunnel vision, you don't see particularly well over
long distances or short distances, just general not very good vision. And then no night vision,
which does mean that I can't drive. But then, I can't drive and I use a laptop at uni but
then almost everyone does. So at this point, other than driving, it hasn't
made a huge amount of difference to my life or whatever and two my brothers have got it
as well. So it hasn't to their lives either.
Many thanks to Ben. For more information and ideas contact BLENNZ at blennz.school.nz