Digital Dynamo

At Visibility’s inception 157 years ago, people would have been pretty perplexed at the term ‘Digital Dynamo’ and what this might mean. Nowadays, technology plays such a prominent role in our everyday lives. Visibility recognised that advancing developments in this area could make a positive difference to the lives of people with a visual impairment.  We’re a small charity in the grand scheme of things, but we were determined to turn our innovative ideas into a reality.  We wanted to train visually impaired people to use tablets and smartphones to aid daily living. From reading books to paying bills, in the last few years our Digital Participation Project has brought the benefits of digital technology to people with sight loss in Glasgow and the west of Scotland. One of the unique features - and a key to our project’s success - is that the tutors and volunteers delivering the training were themselves visually impaired.  It was evident that this approach worked as participants were motivated and inspired by understanding the positive difference that technology had made to the daily lives of the tutors and volunteers. It was truly wonderful to have this work recognised at the Scottish Charity Awards in June last year.  As a charity, we felt strongly that the recognition should lie with the project’s tutors and, especially, the volunteers.  It was just great to see their hard work and commitment rewarded in such a public way. We had applied for the award not thinking for a minute that we might win but, when we did, it was so flattering and fulfilling to have our work recognised at this national level.  The Digital Dynamo award reinforced that what we had been doing was so worthwhile, and spurred us on to continue working with people in building their digital skills, regardless of where they are in their journey with sight loss.  This has now filtered into so many facets of our work – be it the one-to-one sessions that allow adults to learn at their own pace or our work with young children and their families in using technology to learn independently. We picked up an article online recently, which dubbed us ‘Scottish Charity Award winner’ … and nearly a year down the line it’s still so nice to see this accolade attached to our charity name – it makes us very proud! The Scottish Charity Awards was a great experience for us and we would urge any organisations out there who are helping to bridge the digital divide – large or small - to get nominating. Good luck!