Lucy Edwards is a journalist and social media influencer from the United Kingdom. After losing her vision she started a YouTube channel, where she educates the public about life with a disability.
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Transcript
[music]
Narrator: Working Blind, sharing stories of working blind people from across the globe.
Holly Scott-Gardner: Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of Working Blind. I’m really excited to be talking to Lucy Edwards today. Lucy is a journalist and social media influencer. Hi Lucy. How are you?
Lucy: Hello Holl, I’m good, thank you. How are you?
Holly: I’m good. I’m very excited to have you on the podcast today. This is great.
Lucy: When you tweeted me, I was like, “Yes, Holl, got to do this. Got to make this work.”
Holly: Well, I really appreciate you giving me some of your time. You have a really impressive portfolio because you are the first blind Radio 1 presenter which I think is extremely cool. You also have almost a million followers on TikTok and you started your career with social media on YouTube, where you’ve got around 40,000 followers. Did you ever imagine when you started that you’d be here now?
Lucy: Oh my gosh, when you said nearly a million on TikTok, I kind of nearly fainted because I started back in August. I just think this whole journey of people wanting to know, “How does a blind girl do A, B, C, D?” is incredible. No, to answer your question I never imagined that it would go this crazy. Back in, I think it’s 2014, I first started uploading on YouTube and had a video called Blind Girl Does Her Own Make-Up that went crazy.
Then I did do online bits and bobs. I started to train as a journalist and that’s when my love for the media and just everything traditional and non-traditional media started to flourish. If you can hear my retired guide dog chewing on a bone, I really do apologize.
Holly: That’s fine.
Lucy: Then I honestly never imagined that it would get this crazy. The amount of people that have reached out and said, “You are really helping me,” “You brighten my day,” and, “You’re educating me.” It’s brilliant. Absolutely brilliant.
Holly: I think it’s really incredible, honestly, and very exciting to see a blind person having such an influence over people and gaining so many followers, especially someone from the UK because I think we see a lot of– even in terms of social media in general, a lot of people from the US, but not really so many British people.
Lucy: Yes. You know what, Holl, I totally agree. for me, I try, and obviously, I love the fact that it’s flourishing, and my career is going in that sort of direction. I’ve always wanted to build a massive following on social and TikTok’s really allowed me to do that, alongside my presenting portfolio in traditional media. I really do feel like I’ve got wings at the moment. I’m so chuffed with it. I think you’re right. For me, this is why I’m on this pod as well is that I believe that all of us should have a platform to tell our stories, to make a change, to make a difference. Why I do it is to educate the masses.
I know and I knew that younger people are on TikTok. I wanted to show everyone that isn’t necessarily educated at school about blindness. Not only that, chat with folks like you who are doing amazing podcasts and show the world that it’s not just one perspective on blindness. If we all work together, that’s how equality and change happens. I want to plan to do a lot more like social movements, hashtags with all of us. I believe the UK community on Twitter, especially in the VI community is so powerful, and we all have a duty to rally together. If I just stayed in my own lane, I think it’s kind of pointless. Not completely pointless, obviously, but I’m so not about just being on my one .com. It’s about being a community together, isn’t it?
Holly: Right, we have to support each other and actually work together. When we see a blind person doing something that we really believe in, we can lift up their voice and actually support them. Even when we see someone doing something that we think, “Well, I wouldn’t do it like that.” It’s still a valid way of doing something just because it’s not what you were I would do.
Lucy: Completely. I think because there are so little blind voices out there in mainstream media, there tends to be maybe a tendency to maybe judge that one person because it feels like you’re completely being represented by that one person. Yes, that is completely valid. Your thoughts and feelings are completely valid and if you don’t feel represented by that person, you have a valid feeling to feel that way. It’s just that if there was more of us then a lot more people would feel represented if you get what I mean? Hopefully, I’m articulating that correctly.
Holly: Oh, absolutely. I think the problem is, like you say, in the media, there’s so few of us that we almost get viewed as a singular entity when we’re not. We’re a group of people who have vastly different perspectives, whether that be social, political. We have different goals in life. We have different things in our lives that are important to us. Actually, seeing more of us in the media can only be a good thing.
Lucy: Oh, completely. To be honest, Holl, even just us two talking here I know we’re both blind, but we have completely different vision. We went blind at different times in our life. We’ve had different experiences with it. We’ve been to different schools. We’re not just the same. I think that’s what drives inspiration porn as well because there is a lack of understanding and knowledge. I feel like TikTok for me, has really jilted, #learn on TikTok has really jilted the perspective of people because I’m getting comments like, “Oh, yes, well–“
When I first started, my commenters were like, “Well, how do you work a phone?” Now, my audience is like, replying back to people on my latest video, as well. “Of course, she uses a screen reader.” It almost makes me cry because I’m like, “Oh, my gosh, people know now.” All people needed to do is have education and the power of education and positivity and no negativity really does jolt the landscape of everything I feel.
Holly: You’ve really managed to reach a group of people who I don’t think were being reached before by social media or activist movements because we’re just all in different places. You found a place on TikTok, as have some other disabled creators, to reach people and say, “Well, actually, this is how I live my life.” Hopefully, those people will then go on to view any blind person they meet very differently from how they might have viewed them before they met you.
Lucy: Yes, completely. It’s so amazing, the technology that’s out there. I feel as well by giving a platform to other technology, it then prompts other people to add more things to apps and Alt text and better talking scales. Not that I don’t love my talking scales, but £50, oh my God, and highlighting all these issues in a fun way. Just like you’re doing with this, Holl, Working Blind is an amazing concept. I think it’s proving to people that you can work as a blind person because you blinking well can.
Holly: I really appreciate that because I started this podcast, actually, because when I was younger, I knew I’d get a job. My parents always just basically had the same expectations of me as they did of my sister who is sighted. I didn’t know that many blind people who were in work, sadly. I knew they were out there, but I just thought, “I’ve got to bring all these people together,” which is why I did this.
Lucy: I totally agree. I think I’ve had the same upbringing that there was never any question that I would never get a job. Equally, there are people out there that haven’t had, maybe our upbringings that don’t necessarily feel that working was ever a concept in the people around them’s minds. That’s really bad because if there’s no expectation, or there’s no thought that they might go on to greatness or get a job, then in their minds, that’s low self-esteem, anxiety.
Obviously, if there’s no role models, this is what I always say. When I googled blindness when I was younger, nothing came up, Holl. We didn’t have, when we were younger, people like you doing these podcasts and me on BBC going, “Look, I am a symbol here of something you can achieve. You can do this.” There’s barriers every single day for us. It’s like we’re kicking the door down sometimes but I want to prove to little kids they can, and this is what we need to do and it’s what we’re both doing.
Holly: Absolutely. Hopefully, by kicking the door down, we can make it so it’s a bit easier for those kids when they grow up. Talking of careers, did your career goals change when you went blind?
Lucy: Oh, that’s such a good question, completely. This may be different. As we say, for other blind people out there, that for me, because I went blind at 17 years old nearly 8 years ago now, initially, I always say my sighted and non-sighted Lucy dream. My sighted Lucy, I was so up for being a lawyer. I actually went to law school. I got in and got a first in my first year on my exams and things. I just sat there one day, and I was so low because I was a year into my blindness. I just thought, “I am so ill right now. I can’t even take anything in and I just don’t even know whether this is something that I want to do.”
Don’t you think at school, there’s a drive for university?
Holly: Yes.
Lucy: University is absolutely fantastic, I’m not kicking it at all. At law school, it was really good. I don’t think there was any other thought in my mind that university wasn’t an option. I came out of uni thinking, “I feel really ill and I don’t know who I am. My eyes hurt and I can’t see anything. This is all a shock and I’m a teenager. What am I doing?”
I basically sat in my room with strong antidepressants for a good year, thinking, “I’ve just dropped out of law school. I love social media. I love my YouTube channel.” I was being supported by everyone around me, but I just felt like a zombie, Holl, with loads of ice cream. I just sat in my bed with Ben & Jerry’s, not sponsored, but–
[laughter]
Lucy: It was one of them. I got through that and that was just a period of my life. I say that I like to acknowledge that because it’s so important to think about what did happen to me, and it shaped me as a human.
Then I just said to myself, “I’ve got to get through this and think about who Lucy actually is now that I’m feeling a bit better” because I don’t believe you can think about who you are if you’re that ill. It’s such a pinnacle time in your life. It really did shape me. I applied for an Extended Digital News Scheme at the BBC. I got in and the rest is history really. That became me. It became Lucy.
Holly: That’s an incredible story and it’s actually something I didn’t know about you before. I’ve watched quite a few of your videos and I know some things. I didn’t actually know that you’d gone to law school. I think that’s really incredible and actually extremely interesting. How did you become comfortable in front of a camera? Was it part of your media training or did you always find performing easy?
Lucy: Yes. I was that little girl that burst out of the curtains with my hairbrush. My sister would walk behind me. My sister’s a musician, she’s absolutely incredible, Holl. I would big her up, but she will go places, that queen. I would be the person in front of her going, “Hello, this is Alice Edwards behind me. I’m Lucy Edwards. Welcome to our show,” with the hairbrush.
I always used to say to my mum, like, “I want to be a performer.” Then I don’t know. I don’t know what jolted between school and wanting to be a lawyer. I think it was like the human rights activism side of things and school being quite geared up for uni. It’s not that that bit isn’t me because I can be a very serious journalist now and I love education and academia. Definitely, I think performing was always in my blood. I don’t know why because my mum and dad are like, they just want to turn the camera away for them. They’re like, “Where did you get this from, Luce?” Same with my sister.
There’s no creative. My dad’s an engineer and my mum’s a nurse. My dad does the most amazing paintings. Well, he did when he was younger and my sister obviously is a musician. Anyway, it does run in our family. Where was I going with this? Yes, just performing and things, it has always been part of me. I’ve always been a Chatty Cathy. I’ve always wanted to know about people, what they’re doing, how they are. I could stand there for an hour chatting to someone on the train or whatever. I’m always making new friends.
It seems like people can’t shut me up. It is definitely me and I think with the camera, how I got used to it is, to be honest, I was really, really shy at the start. When you look at Blind Girl Does Her Own Make-Up when I was 17, Ollie put the camera on me and I was like, “Hello.”
You have to have that awkward, “Hello, my name is Lucy,” sweet moment, and you do worry about looking at the camera, as well, as a blind person, and training yourself to look a certain way and all that comes with practice and time and Aira or people around you or voice technology. It was something to get used to. I think I only really started feeling comfy about a year into my YouTube but it really was what I would say to anyone out there, I don’t know whether you will say this, Holl, that you just got to do it. You just got to do it. If you want to do it, you just do it. You just have to sit there. If Aira’s going to help you, someone else is going to help you. You can edit. You can upload, as we were saying on the guide dogs webinar. Sorry, I literally, as we say, not getting a word in edgeways are you, Holl, here, and I’m chatting your head off. There we go. That’s me.
Holly: That’s absolutely fine. I love it, honestly. I try and talk as little as possible on these because I really want the people I interview to talk. It’s great when I don’t have to pry answers out of someone. How do people in the industry really respond to your blindness?
Lucy: Oh, what an amazing question. What I would say is that, at the BBC, they’re fantastic. I really would say that, hands down, that they’re an amazing corporation. When I walked in there, I had support from Damon, who was my manager for a time, who is also blind journalist. Emma Tracey. I was put in a really supportive team in BBC Ouch. It was absolutely fantastic.
The things that I learnt there were absolutely invaluable to my career. I think there is still a lot of tokenism. There is still a lot of misunderstanding, maybe. If people as I say, just going back to the TikTok, if people are educated, I think the barrier then is broken between us both. It is the lack of education still out there in the workplace to really know how to support a blind person.
I feel like throughout my career because I’ve had a document of, “A, B, C, D, E, this is what I want out of a situation.” You hand it to your managers and it’s about being headstrong as a person to say, “I need this,” which is really hard when you’re a young girl not knowing really what you need, as a young woman, rather. It is having to put yourself out there a bit. It is chatting to people and just making them realize, “Hey, I’m just Lucy. I do need adaptations, but I’m Lucy.”
Also, the understanding that, as hard as I try, I am a very, very good journalist but I’m not a sighted journalist. I am going to take a bit longer than a sighted person and it’s about owning that. I used to feel really, really guilty and really, really like, “Oh my gosh, maybe someone won’t hire me because I’m not as quick as the next sighted journalist.” Actually, over the past, maybe even half a year, it’s quite a new development in my psyche. I’m just like, “Well, if they don’t want to, then they can go away.” I am me. I’m only a bit slower in terms of getting my tech ready and things. Once I’m away, I’m away, but they can’t expect me to have a blind journalist and basically act like a sighted person because I’m not. There we go. Not that loads of people have, I’m just saying, just as a PSA, “There we go. I’m Lucy.”
Holly: I love that. I love your confidence and I love the acknowledgment that you are a blind person and that you can be proficient at your job but you are not a sighted person. I think that’s so important to recognize because I think we do beat ourselves up and we feel guilty for not being sighted and that’s so destructive.
Lucy: Oh my gosh, I totally agree. I’ve had so many times in my life, in my career, where I’ve sat there, I’m like, “I’m not sighted anymore.” That grief has consumed me. “Oh, I used to be able to do this. I used to be able to do that. I could see that,” or, “If I could just click with the mouse pointer like I used to.” No, no, no, no, no. Do not do that to yourself. Take it from me, and I’m sure you, Holly, will echo this. If you think about the past and don’t think about the future and moving on, you will feel so so bad. That is what led to my mental breakdown.
You have to love yourself and no matter how many people make you feel crap about your disability, you are not horrible. You are valid. You are amazing. Just because you have a disability and you have extra access requirements needs, it doesn’t mean that you are not amazing and capable at that job. You just do things in a different way.
Holly: I’m so glad someone has come on this podcast and said this because I think we spend a lot of time talking about how we can prove that we are good enough. We talk about a lot of things like proving you’re capable at interviews and these things matter. Also, it’s really important to say, “Actually you matter just because.” You don’t need to be anything else. You literally just matter because you’re a person and so I’m very glad someone’s come on and actually said this. Then, what changes would you like to see in the industry, I guess going on from this?
Lucy: You know what? I was just chatting to a really dear colleague of mine the other week and I was just saying, I think, if there was– this is where I think collaboration comes in, Holl, from all of us across the board as blind social media advocates, but also as blind journalists just in the workplace, that if there was like a unified agreed code of conduct almost, that we could hand a piece of paper to someone and they had a brief outline of what we need, what we need from a situation, and how best that they can work with us. If they want to give us one back that that’s fine too-
Holly: [laughs]
Lucy: -if they work in a different way, if they have a different disability or if they have communication needs. Once I’m happy to take another code of conduct back. I think there needs to be this collaboration from industries to show how capable someone is and word that document in a way that you will get the best out of this subset of people more generally because of this. Then I think if you see these rules or the code of conduct that we’ve come up with because I think more generally, that would bring up the people who are less confident to come out and say– who haven’t written a document like me who’s a Chatty Cathy, will chat your heads off and tell everyone your needs, wants, and desires in the single phone call.
There’s people out there that don’t want to do that and equally, previous in this conversation we have said that all blind people are different. We need to take that into account but I think if we had a standardized code of conduct almost and we tweaked it to our own individual needs in a job, I think that would make a lot more people confident.
Holly: Right, because employers would also expect that sort of document so they’d know, “Okay, an employee’s going to give me this information,” and they wouldn’t be so resistant then it would just be an expectation actually.
Lucy: Yes, exactly. It would, and what I think then is if we all had this standardized bit of data, you could then go in as Holly, as Lucy, and say, “That’s not quite me, I would do this,” but equally that’s a really good thing to say and it would prompt thoughts on our individual basis that we could add to it. It would be brilliant.
Holly: Yes, that makes total sense. I’ve actually drawn up an outline like this for education to send to university lecturers because I found that one thing that often happens is you send all your DSA information off and you get your equipment but your lecturer doesn’t know what you need because they don’t have that information. I drew up my own but it amazed me because when I went looking online there were no templates for anything like that. I was shocked actually, I thought it was really unfortunate.
Lucy: Don’t you think it floors you?
Holly: Yes.
Lucy: That you could spend hours and hours and hours on all these separate documents and all of us have probably made one. I’ve never made a DSA document but that is just incredible that you have. I think, as I say, community and we need to be united-
Holly: Yes, we need to share these resources.
Lucy: -is so important. Would we have ever had this discussion even if it wasn’t on your podcast call? This is the thing, it’s crazy, isn’t it?
Holly: Right, yes. These conversations need to happen. What are your future plans? I always ask this question, I always think it’s so funny because people go, “Ooh,” whenever I do. [laughs]
Lucy: Oh yes. Oh, my future plans? I want to make podcasts, I want to make documentaries on a wider scale as well in 2021. I want to grow my TikTok, my YouTube, my socials to an even wider audience, and I want to collaborate with as many disabled influencers and just shout from the rooftops. Also, I want to get a disabled pride event going. It’s always been my aim for years and years to have a disabled pride event in London or something. Yes, those are my aims, I don’t know whether they’ll happen just in one year.
Holly: That’s amazing. I expect they might not all happen in 2021, but I’m sure you’ll make some really good progress. I’m personally really, really excited to see what you do. One final question, what is your advice to a young blind person who says, “I want to be a journalist.” What do you say to them?
Lucy: My advice is, put yourself out there ASAP. If you want to be a broadcast journalist, get on YouTube, get learning software like Reaper, like Final Cut Pro, get your keyboard shortcuts down because often, when you enter an environment like the BBC, you can use Final Cut Pro and your skills on Reaper. There’s not necessarily a standardized– well, there are standardized software’s but as a visually impaired person, we go with what’s accessible. The sooner you can jump into those things, the better.
Listen to Holly’s podcast, listen to the Guide Dogs Webinar, and think about your path and where you see yourself, what kind of articles or content do you want to produce? Maybe have articles that have been written by the people in your arsenal to say, “I like this, this and this.” This could be a set of links that you look up to. Write your own blog if you want to be a print journalist. Basically, because there’s so many subsets of journalism, there’s so many departments in the BBC, there’s Arts, and Ends, there’s Travel Shows, there’s Click, do you want to be a tech journo?
Do you want to be on BBC Ouch where it’s like disabled journalism? What do you want to do and what kind of topics do you like? Because often, I’ve been driven by telling stories about blindness which is absolutely amazing and I think is the pinnacle of what gets me up in the morning to educate people on blindness, but also you have to think, “What is Lucy?”
I love knitting, I love gardening, I love watching The Crown, I love being with my fiancé and going to the cinema and being with my guide dog and editing videos. I don’t know. Just think about who you are and what you want to be and that will help you in your career, and be a Chatty Cathy if you can.
Holly: That is absolutely wonderful advice, Lucy. I just want to say again, a huge thank you for coming on the podcast and I’ve learnt so much.
Lucy: Thanks for having me honey pie, speak soon.
Holly: Yes, speak to you soon.
Narrator: Thanks for listening to Working Blind. If you like the podcast, please subscribe. For more of my advocacy initiatives including my blog, visit my website http://catchthesewords.com. You can also find me on Twitter and Instagram @CatchTheseWords. That’s C-A-T-C-H T-H-E-S-E W-O-R-D-S. If you have any comments or feedback, please email me, holly@catchthesewords.com.
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