Lucy Edwards speaks exclusively to Enable Magazine for World Sight Day 2024
Huge congrats on your recent collaboration with Barbie. How did it feel fronting the campaign?
EVERYTHING! I really do think it was a landmark moment for me and my community.
I didn’t believe in my wildest dreams that we’d ever have a Barbie in my lifetime that looked like me, so to be the face of the first bind Barbie is still a pinch me moment. When I got the call from my management team I was so overjoyed and happy, I got off the call and just burst into tears!
I think whether you are blind, sighted, young or old, Blind Barbie is for you. The more people that play with her and who experience the wonderful features she has the better, it really has put blindness on the map which is so important.
When you haven’t had that representation previously, people don’t understand blindness or they worry about it – it can often feel like an elephant in the room. But when there’s a cultural moment like the introduction of Blind Barbie, for kids to be playing with her as they would any other doll, it normalises this and becomes part of society as it should.
When I think back as to how isolated I felt as a child, that’s down to the fact that people didn’t necessarily know what my disability was, Blind Barbie can help with that.
Another first for you this year – walking in Copenhagen Fashion Week. Tell us a little about this, how did it come about and?
I’ve worked with Anna from Hair and Care for years who has just been amazing. As well as being an incredible hair stylist for the likes of Lana Del Rey, she herself has lived experience as she has a loved one living with sight loss.
Being very close to my heart and with her personal experience we thought we were the perfect pairing to bring the vision of this show to life.
It’s so important to surround yourself with people who just get it. With the fashion world, it historically lacks diversity or inclusivity but with myself and Anna, we both have experience of being on shoots, navigating the challenges of the industry and we know the landscape. We know what it is right now and have fully accepted the challenge to make it inclusive.
Working with Sinead and Anna are really at the forefront of the inclusivity movement so to work with them really is a privilege.
Anna previously worked with her charity to make London Fashion Week inclusive for visually impaired guests, and Copenhagen was a step up with not only audio description but sample swatches of the models clothing, fully representing visually impaired people.
Do you think the fashion and beauty industry need to change in terms of catering to those with sight loss? If so, how?
It definitely needs to change.
When i took the hand of the model who was walking with me it was such an incredible feeling, she audio described the faces of those we were walking past and said their faces were just beaming smiles or jaws completely open (in a good way!)
You get one of two reactions but that’s what we want. This isn’t going to be easy but myself and Anna are so dedicated to making the fashion industry more inclusive and that’s something we won’t give up on.
World Sight Day is 10th October this year and focuses on Children’s Eye Health as seen HERE, with starting a family being a potential next step for you and Ollie, what does this day mean to you?
This day is so important. Every day is a sight loss day for me as I live it every day. But with the day being targeted to thinking about children going through this experience, this is incredibly important to highlight.
Myself and Ollie are currently thinking about our IVF journey and with that, comes the discussion around potentially passing on my sight loss to our children. It really is really top of mind for us with our family planning.
What advice would you give to parents or children who are living with sight loss?
To anyone out there who has a little one with sight loss, it’s going to be OK.
We have a lot of work to do, but the landscape is changing in the fact that children with sight loss can now start to see themselves represented. We’re not there yet and we have a lot of work to do, but the technological advances since I lost my sight 12 years ago have been huge.
It’s about telling your little one don’t be scared, you can be independent and have a fulfilling life with sight loss; that’s what my parents always taught me. I caught the bus, I met with friends, I did everything a “normal” little girl would do even when I was scared, because I am normal. This is normal.
It’s about telling young people around you that disability means ability. The world around you needs to be fixed, not you and by sending those positive messages out into the world when we are young means we can have a confident population of blind people who feel like they can do anything because they really can.
You recently celebrated your first year of marriage – congrats! What have been your highlights from the last 12 months? How do you plan to celebrate your one year anniversary?
This year me and Ollie are heading back to Kew Gardens for our one year anniversary and are hoping to go abroad somewhere on holiday at some point. We’ve also got each other little presents for each other as it’s our paper anniversary.
Apart from our travels and business one of our personal highlights has to be the work we’ve done to the house this year. Having a space that we can enjoy as a family is so important to us – family really is number one.
I always dreamed of having a kitchen where we had an island, Ollie could sit and have a cheeseboard and our kids could run up and join us there. We made that happen in the last twelve months by creating our dream kitchen which we cannot be happier with.
We’ve been to the Paralympics, we’re going to South Africa and New York too. I think back to everything we’ve done together, the documentaries we’ve filmed and the platform we have created and I really am so proud of us. Looking back to those two teenagers scared of my sight loss and what the future could bring, we really did grow up overnight.
From the wedding to our business, we really have had such an incredible year. We’re such a great team, always 50/50 on everything and we just adore what we do. I feel so lucky to have such a supportive husband in every way and I can’t be prouder of the home and life we have created.
What’s next for you and Ollie?
We are family planning and hoping to start the IVF journey around December time. We’re going to try in the next 6 months to start the journey and hope it’ll happen at some point next year.
We also want to grow our business and make more incredible documentaries about things and places that mean the most to us. Ollie is an amazing videographer and we’re just hoping to explore the world and document it, it’s such a passion of ours. We’ve got some incredible trips coming up including New York with Youtube, South Africa with Conde Nast and ahead of a gorgeous Christmas ahead with our families.
One thing we do feel very passionately about aside from our documentaries is changing the face of beauty. We’re so passionate about labelling products; Ollie spends hours and hours labelling my makeup bag and talking me through products. If Ollie didn’t have to do that, we could just come from shopping and everything was labelled, I wouldn’t have to rely on carers around me.
Creating a brand that offers a universal tactile language is the ultimate goal.
Your recent campaign with Müller highlighted how those living with sight loss can experience high levels of stress whilst shopping, with food waste, time lost, and lack of independence also worrying factors. In a category first, the brand has now introduced NaviLens codes to its packaging. How much of a difference would it make if all food and drink brands followed suit?
It would make THE biggest difference if Navilens codes were on everything in the supermarket or everything in general to be honest.
I cannot tell you how many things I have opened which have gone off or become inedible because I have to sniff it or touch it to know what it is. If I had Navilens on the front of the packaging, all of this would be minimised which would mean I would minimise food waste. I could understand what I’m holding, the price, and ingredients without relying on others to help me.
I am also vegetarian which means I often have to rely on sighted people to tell me if there is meat in something. It’s fabulous when I’m with my husband or a sighted person, but even better when there’s a Navilens code to tell me myself.
I’m 28, but I remember scanning Navilens code just a few years ago for the first time. It was nearly my ten year anniversary of going blind and I burst into tears. It meant so much to me that I could finally read the price of something or understand the ingredients in something.
When you’ve lost something and you feel like you’re never going to get that back, it can be hard. I felt like the sighted world had shut me out forever but I have hope that one day everything will have Navilens codes on, and I don’t have to rely on anyone anymore.
I didn’t think that would ever happen in my lifetime.
Clearly accessible Packaging is something that you’re incredibly passionate about from your previous discussion around Navilens. Today research was released by Roland DG that reveals that millions of visually impaired people face a daily challenge of navigating the supermarket aisles due to the inconsistent and sparse use of accessible packaging – how do you feel about this?
Accessible packaging is more than just a convenience—it’s a lifeline for people like me who are visually impaired. Having clear, tactile, or scannable information on packaging can mean the difference between safety and uncertainty. Brands that embrace this printing technology are not only leading the way in inclusivity but are also setting a standard for others to follow.