Eli London as Ava in RNBI's "See the person, not the sight loss" campaign film
The Royal National Institute Of Blind People (RNIB) has released a moving short film dealing with the painful reality of teenage sight loss as part of its latest “See the person, not the sight loss” campaign.
The full film runs at three and a half minutes with shorter versions being released to support the campaign in U.K. cinemas and on TV and VOD platforms.
The fully-audio described production recounts the fictional story of teen Ava, authentically portrayed by visually impaired actor Eli London, as she navigates school, personal relationships and family life amidst the initial despair of experiencing chronically failing sight.
The film additionally supports research commissioned by RNIB, undertaken in September, that identified that 39% of individuals who experienced sight loss as a teen worried about how they would be able to continue to socialize with friends and 35% were concerned about whether they would be able to complete their education and secure a job in the future.
Grief and acceptance
Though ending on a positive note as Ava slowly comes to appreciate that she will not, as she first feared, have to give up everything she once loved, most notably gaming — in its initial stages, the campaign is saturated with raw emotion.
As a traumatized and bewildered Ava tries to balance school life, hospital appointments and time with friends, she laments but breaks off; “This whole life I had. It’s just….”
Through the tears and heartbreak, a disconsolate Ava pronounces, “I don’t want help. I don’t want a cane. I don’t want anything.”
Slowly, however, as Ava moves through the process of rehabilitation and is introduced to assistive technologies that can level the playing field and help her get back to her education and doing what she loves – a message of hope emerges.
Picking up her beloved games controller, she resolves, “I can still do me things. Just differently.”
Addressing the impact of the campaign film, David Aldwinckle RNIB’s Director of Insight and Customer Voice said:
“I’m excited by the launch of our important campaign and with the authenticity of our film, which captures the range of feelings that people go through — the fear, the sense of anxiety, the anger and denial. But really importantly, it captures the fact that we also have desire, passion, ambition, skills and abilities to live full lives and contribute to the world around us just like everybody else.”
The production, along with the important messages it raises, will receive further amplification when it gets the Gogglebox treatment on prime-time TV this evening on Channel 4 in the United Kingdom.
Gogglebox is a show in which friends and family members from the U.K. are filmed reacting to the past week’s TV programming and spawned The People’s Couch and Celebrity Gogglebox USA on the other side of the Atlantic.
Eli London (22), who portrays Ava, developed sight loss as a result of childhood cancer and is an avid gamer, said of the production:
“This short film is going to have a tangible, deep impact for a lot of people. Following a young woman, a student, a gamer, through a sight loss journey is overtly a different approach to media that has covered this story before, but it's important and necessary. We exist, and it's been a pleasure to bring her story to screen, to give someone out there their truest representation.”
Eli London as Ava using headphones to listen to lesson content in the classroom
A unique journey
What this film does superbly well in a relatively short space of time is capture two of the defining components that come from losing one’s sight. There is the inevitable grief but also the journey of rehabilitation and both are unlike that of any other disability.
Underpinning grief is a colossal sense of fear. Yes – eyesight is precious but so are all the senses and abilities.
What makes sight loss so different is that sight itself is so difficult to define and explain. It’s all-encompassing throughout the day and a sense we only switch off from when we sleep.
Whereas a non-disabled person may be able to imagine a mobility impairment from having experienced an injured limb or hearing loss from having tried to listen to a conversation in a noisy environment – there are few dress rehearsals to a life with sight loss.
This may go some of the way to explaining why RNIB’s campaign research identified a large number of misconceptions and curiosities regarding sight loss from others.
Amongst questions survey respondents had encountered were:
‘How do you know when you have your period?’ (20%), ‘How do you look after your children?’ (15%) and ‘Can your guide dog read bus numbers?’ (10%).
At the point of diagnosis of chronic sight impairment, patients, and younger people in particular, are also asking themselves difficult questions about what the future might hold.
This combination of fear allied to grief can make for a potent cocktail.
Low vision rehabilitation is also a unique process. After all, there is no catch-all one-size-fits-all vision aid tool – the sight equivalent of a hearing aid.
Assistive technology and equipment for blindness and low vision is very task-specific and those with sight loss can find themselves living with a veritable toolbox of both High- and Low-Tech solutions.
Populating this toolbox can be a slow experimental process of trial and error. Small, piecemeal adaptations and learnings that slowly build upon each other to create a cohesive whole.
Eventually, the individual living with sight loss may gradually begin to appreciate that, though they might not have the life they expected before vision impairment, neither are they living the one they feared so much immediately after it arrived.
In Ava’s own words, “It’s not going to be easy. But that’s not stopped me before.”
It’s an important message and one both the newly diagnosed and wider public would do well to listen to.
