Me as a Visually Impaired Traveller

Hi, my name is Stephen Boswell and I’m Visually Impaired. I have Retinitis Pigmentosa (RP), which is a degenerative disease of the retina that causes a loss of peripheral/low-light eyesight together with a degradation of core vision. I’ve used Visually Impaired (VI) throughout the site as, having moved from Partially Sighted/Sight Impaired to Blind/Severely Sight Impaired myself, I’m not sure where the practical boundary between the two lies.

I’ve always liked to travel, visiting far-flung places, but as I lost my sight I realised that I would have to change how I approached things, and looked for more specialised travel companies to help me in this. Southampton Sight, the local sight-loss charity that I volunteer for, asked me to contribute a blog on ‘Foreign Travel for the Visually Impaired’ (See below) and when I started this web creation course I thought it would be interesting to describe some of my travels as a VI.

The Blog has no posting order time-line. The posts are added as I remember things I’ve done on different holidays: the ‘Posted on’ date should tell you when the event actually happened, not when I added the Post to the blog. I occasionally refer to how my eyesight affected a trip or event and using this time-line system allows visitors to get an idea of the changes in my eyesight as my RP develops.