Blind schoolgirl passes GCSEs using Braille

An aspiring actress who is completely blind has spoken of her joy after passing her GCSEs.

Alleah Beard-Pace, from Cardiff, said she was so nervous about her results that she didn’t want to go into her school to pick them up last week.

Studying for her GCSEs using Braille and doing her exams was particularly difficult for Alleah, 16, who lost her sight after having cancer at the age of two.

"It was a lot,” said the Mary Immaculate High School student. "For me to revise was quite difficult because it was so much to go through."

"I was missing quite a few lessons and I was picking up my revision and I was like ‘this is too big to read’," she said.

Alleah was also given extra time in her exams, which she did using Braille - a written language for blind people which uses patterns of raised dots to represent letters of the alphabet.

Her mother, Mandy Pace, further explained the difficulty with revision, adding: "It is just getting the Braille I suppose... it is a lot more than just giving you a sheet.

"It is getting it embossed out and obviously equipment for Alleah to use is so expensive that it is hard to get that as well. A lot of the stuff isn’t accessible for her."

Mandy said Alleah had tumours when she was diagnosed with cancer – one in her abdomen and at the back of her eyes.

The tumour on her abdomen was removed through surgery, but the ones behind her eyes, which are benign, could not be removed.

It was an incredibly worrying time for the family, but Mandy said it was amazing Alleah had overcome her challenges to achieve what she had so far.

“She has had people tell her ‘you can’t do that because you can’t see’, and yet... she can," Mandy said.

“She has had a lot of that, but it just makes her stronger every time somebody says that to her.”

Alleah got three Cs, three Bs and an A, allowing her to go to Bridgend College to study performing arts.

She said: “The main thing for me is I needed my drama, so I was very stressed about that one.

"I saw that I passed and I [thought], ‘thank Lord’. I needed it. I put in the work for it and I got it."

Alleah, who also plays the piano and sings, has had a passion for performing from a very young age and used to go to drama classes every Sunday at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama.

She is also part of a visually impaired drama and music group in Cardiff which is run by the charity, UCAN.

On the next chapter in her daughter’s life, Mandy said: "It is going to be exciting. It will be nice to find out if that is completely what she wants, even though she has loved it since forever. I don’t think she has liked anything else.”

The Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB) Cymru said education for the visually impaired in Wales was "patchy".

Director Ansley Workman said the charity often heard from people who had been "let down".

"Getting the right support in place is too often a fraught experience for all," she said.

"It shouldn’t be a battle to access essential resources in the right format."

She said the charity had worked with teachers, parents, children and others to develop a specialist curriculum for the visually impaired.

"We’re asking the Welsh government to use this framework and make sure that local authorities get the funding they need to deliver a consistent level of specialist education services across Wales."