Hansard

I welcome the opportunity to speak in the debate. I congratulate Robert Brown on his motion to celebrate the 200th anniversary of Louis Braille's birth. It is appropriate to discuss that at this time. I also congratulate on their work Robert Brown, as convener of the cross-party group on visual impairment, and the other members of the group, many of whom are in the public gallery.

The debate gives us the opportunity not only to celebrate Louis Braille's life but to consider some of the work that campaigning organisations do throughout Scotland and to reflect on action that the Scottish Government can take to improve the lives of people who are visually impaired or blind.

Just before Christmas, I attended an event in my community at which I came across a man who was active in the community and who liked to attend and participate in the various events that are organised. He recently became blind because of an accident. When I spoke to him, I was struck by how much that had affected his life. That made me reflect on what it is like for people to lose their sight or never to have had sight. We all become caught up in our own hectic lives, but when we reflect on such situations, we realise the struggles that blind and visually impaired people must face and the situations that they must overcome.

The advent of the Braille system has helped people to read, to communicate and to experience much more in life. The life of Louis Braille shows that he was used to struggling against adversity. It is obvious that he was a strong character to overcome his circumstances. Robert Brown and Stuart McMillan spoke about that. At the age of 10, Louis Braille left his village in France to go to a school in Paris, which must have been daunting and intimidating. He was determined to learn to read. The school that he attended had only 14 books with raised-type letters. He read them all, but he encountered difficulty in reading the sentences, because the letters were so large that by the time the end of the sentence was reached, it was sometimes difficult to remember what the sentence conveyed. As a result, he became determined to produce a more concise system, so he developed the coded format that we have now.

Society owes a lot to Louis Braille's work. We are glad that Scotland has a number of campaigns and campaigners who continue the work on behalf of the blind. I pay tribute to two campaigners in my constituency—Jimmy and Margaret O'Rourke—who are steadfast workers on behalf of such organisations.

As for what the Scottish Government can do, it can consider several issues. It is important to learn the lessons of the previous elections and to consider the report on them. In more than 25 years in which I have been involved in elections, several times when blind people have turned up to vote, people at polling stations and—it must be said—representatives of political parties have been unsure of how to deal with them. I am struck by how a blind or visually impaired person feels about that. Are they likely to return to vote and to participate in the democratic process? The lesson is that we must put in place the correct procedures if we are to encourage people to come and vote.

I am aware that I am running out of time, Presiding Officer, but I want to mention two further important areas: access to health and social care, including support for the Scottish vision strategy; and education and the right to learn campaign.

I welcome the motion that Robert Brown has brought to the chamber and the opportunity that it has given to celebrate Louis Braille's life. I commend the work of the many campaigners and campaigns in Scotland in taking forward that work and in trying to improve the quality of life of those who are blind and visually impaired. I am happy to support the motion.