Leah wins vision bursary

Woy Woy resident Ms Leah Findlay has been awarded with a Further Education Bursary from Vision Australia.

Ms Findlay suffers from retinitis pigmentosa, a hereditary eye condition which causes a degeneration of the light sensitive cells and pigment layer of the retina.

She will use the financial support received from Vision Australia to purchase a laptop and software program called Zoomtext that magnify's the text on her computer screen.

The young university student was also able to buy screen reading software and an LCD CCTV with 19" inch full colour display.

The financial assistance received from Vision Australia will help Ms Findlay achieve her dream of studying law at the University of NSW.

Vision Australia's Further Education Bursaries enable people who are blind or have low vision to study independently using adaptive technology.

Laptops, CCTVs, digital playback devices, voice recorders, scanners and screen magnification and screen reading software are just some of the technologies which help students with their studies.

At a value of approximately $8000 each, Vision Australia relies on the generously of local communities to be able to fund this life changing bursary program.

Press release, 29 May 2009 Megan Denyer, Vision Australia