Every time she takes out her phone while she is out walking, Kay Haines worries about what people might think. Walking with the cane she uses almost every day, she rarely leaves the house alone unless she is taking her kids to school.
"If I get my phone out, I’m very wary of people’s perceptions of being blind is like - it does not mean you are in complete darkness," she said, adding that she sometimes fears people think she is lying. "It's the perception that someone with a cane can’t see at all, so how could they see their phone?"
Mum-of-three Kay, from St Julians in Newport, suffers from Stargardt disease, a rare genetic eye disease that causes progressive vision loss. It usually starts in childhood, but many - including Kay - don't start to lose their sight until they're older. She never had issues as a child but began to develop problems with her eyesight when she was a teenager.
