'Blind, but with the world at my fingertips'

9:06am Friday 21st July 2006

When he lost his sight four years ago, Jim Welch felt isolated and dependent on others. But with specialist computer software, he's found independence - and friends across the world. Lindsay Jennings reports.

JIM Welch has booted up his computer and is about to enter an Internet chat room. "There might not be anybody there actually, you usually get the odd one or two at dinner time, but mostly it's in the evenings," he says, pausing while the page he wants comes up.

"Nope, there's no one in there. Not to worry," he says cheerfully. "I'll show you what else you can do."

Jim, 56, has been blind for four years. He is accessing the chat room where he goes to talk to others involved with The Accessible Friends Network (TAFN), a group of blind friends who teach computer skills and socialise online. I watch in amazement as his fingers flit around the keyboard at speed. There are notches along the top of the keyboard so he can find his way around, but the keys are so familiar to him, he doesn't need to use them. Every time he types, his efforts are spoken aloud, albeit in one of those awful, computerised monotone voices. But Jim does not mind. "You get used to it," he says, and you can always change the voices.

He deftly accesses the settings, flicking through the selection, the voices shout out their names with an American computerised twang - "Shelley", "Bobby", "Rocco" and "Glen". There's even one under "Grandma", which sounds suspiciously like a computerised version of the grandma in The Waltons. "Some of them do sound odd," he concedes.

Scrolling down, Jim picks out activities for TAFN members from a long list. There's a bingo hall, audio theatre, a DJ studio "where you can find any radio stations you want", English Country Garden, for gardening tips, monopoly, quiz nights...

"And there's the chess club," he says, smiling. "It just goes on and on. It's all over the Internet, it's all audible. If you can get familiar with the keys you're away."

But his life was so different four years ago when he first discovered he was going blind.

"It just came out of the blue, in more ways than one, because it started with me getting blue blotches in front of my eyes," says Jim, of Crook, County Durham. "The hospital told me that I'd had a stroke, and I didn't know it at the time, I'd thought it was a migraine. A few days later I woke up and couldn't see, it was like looking through a milk bottle, through milky water."

Jim, a former heavy goods vehicle fitter, went to London's Moorfields Eye Hospital for an exploratory operation, but was told the damage done by the stroke to his retinas was irreparable. Jim was devastated. He had been reliant on a wheelchair for 15 years because of a spinal disorder and felt being blind would take away any vestige of independence.

"It felt like a bereavement really," he says. "I thought I was going to be stuck in a chair with a black curtain before me and Margaret, my wife, saying 'can I get you this' and 'can I get you that?' I felt totally isolated."

Jim realised there wasn't much in the way of activities or help for blind people in his area. Undeterred, he and Margaret set up the charity Blind Life in Durham two years ago. The aim was to offer support to blind people and provide a valuable social setting in which to meet new people.

"I didn't have very much confidence in meeting other people but meeting other people through Blind Life gave me more confidence," he admits. "It was like a therapy session meeting others in the same position and we helped each other out."

With the confidence he had gained, he turned his attention to computers.

"The first thing I missed when I went blind was not being able to write in my diary, and I missed reading books," he says. "I'd been on a computer course before and I started off by getting a laptop with a specialist screen reading programme. I began with one key at a time and I thought the only way I can do this is by touch typing, so I taught myself to touch type."

After pressing Bishop Auckland College he ended up on a computer course using the Jaws (Job Access with Speech) software, which he now has installed on his home computer.

"It gave me such confidence using it because it meant I could get on the computer by myself instead of having Margaret or my son standing over me all the time," he says.

When Jim joined TAFN, he ended up with scores of friends over the Internet. He recalls the first time he logged on and pressed the talk button.

"All of a sudden this voice came over and said 'hello Jim, how are you?' I said 'who are you?' and he said 'I'm Steve'. I was a bit shy when I first started using it, but now I have the world at my fingertips."

Back at his computer, he continues scrolling through the long list of activities he can join through TAFN.

"There's a chap from Australia, he can come up online and say 'Jim, I've got a bit of a problem with Jaws, can you help us'? I can help him out and he can help me," he says. "I can listen to an audio play or have a game of chess with someone. We have a quiz on a Friday night, there's about 20 of us take part in a quiz."

People from all over the world?

"Oh yes," he smiles. "Although it depends on the time. You can't always make it if you're in Australia."

Jim's keen to share his experiences to encourage other people not to feel alone. The new-found confidence he's gained has led to him embarking on other challenges - playing his guitar, and even taking part in a blind Nissan drive challenge event in Sunderland, driving a British School of Motoring car around a Nissan test track. He's joined the local writers' club in Crook and is back writing his diary again. Of course, it's not all rosy, but through his computer, Jim need never feel isolated again.

"The things I still miss most are colours, being able to look at flowers and see my family," he says. "If there's anything wrong, you don't get any body language, you just rely on people's voices.

"But I knew I had to make the best of it because of my family and with the right attitude you can make things better for yourself."

* For more information about The Accessible Friends Network (TAFN) contact www.tafn.org.uk or 0845 838 2369.

* Blind Life in Durham meets at The Abbeyday Centre, in Pity Me, Durham, on the second Monday of the month. For more information contact Jim, who's the chairman, on (01388) 763501 or log onto www.blindlifeindurham.org.uk