Helping the individual - Max's story

His amazing mother said:

Your charity kindly bought Max a CCTV to enable him to try and be mainstream educated. Max regularly uses the machine for his work and especially when he is recovering from operations (Max has had 6 operations since we last spoke). Max has coped so well at school and tears were brought to my eyes on Saturday when Max ended up wining the academic achievement prize at Longacre School's speech day on Saturday.

We are so grateful to Vision Charity as he would not have been able to see the materials, class books and detail which your machine enabled and would have never have been able to extend his reading skills.(Max's reading age is about 5 years ahead and the print gets jolly small as the books progress).

Max is an extremely bright child and I insisted on trying to ensure he was mainstream educated – to say the least he has topped the year in all areas (apart from ball skills!!) and, his teachers and everyone involved in his care are so proud of his high achievement.

It would be lovely to have a photo for your website and write the article we discussed, illustrating the purpose of your charity, to show that bright, visually impaired children CAN be mainstream educated, CAN achieve better than normal visual children and CAN do everything that was suggested impossible when he was suddenly diagnosed with uveitis losing his sight at 3years.

Max is an inspiration to all his friends, family and anyone that meets him. The care from Great Ormond street and my refusal to accept ‘not possible' has enabled Max to be the happiest little boy and to achieve beyond anyone's expectation.