Derry first Council on island to pass motion for sight loss accessibility

Street clutter and public transport in Derry are among the key focus areas in an attempt to make the area more accessible for visually impaired people.

The council is set to partner with the RNIB and the North West Regional College and its Design Innovation for Assisted Living (DIAL) Centre to provide training, information, and best practice guidelines to civic institutions and local businesses to ensure that they can provide the appropriate support to those with visual impairments.

Commenting on the motion passed at Council, Mayor Sandra Duffy said: “It’s really important to raise awareness of people here living with blindness or visual impairment across the city and district and some of the challenges that they might face as not everybody would be fully aware of them. 

"People often think of sight loss and think of either you can see or you can’t see and not about the many different shades of vision in between.

“No one should experience sight loss without the appropriate support. Despite advancements in clinical treatments over the last decade, less attention has been paid to the patient pathway as a whole."

In the Derry and Strabane council area, there are estimated to be 4,030 people currently living with some sort of visual impairment.

Mayor Duffy was thrilled with the unanimous support for the motion. She added: "We should definitely become a visually aware city, we need to break down those barriers, and we need to have a greater understanding of people who are living with sight loss.”

Seconding the motion, Alliance Councillor, Philip McKinney, urged everyone to take up the training offered by the RNIB, “It is free and really, really interesting. It gives you an insight," he said.

“We are the first city in Northern Ireland and indeed the whole of Ireland to actually put this motion through and I think we need to lead the way and make it open for everyone.”