Ambassador, Public Speaker, Advocate, Founder, Artist, College Student…Molly is a young woman who has established a trust and travelled around the UK and beyond for public speaking engagements. She did this while completing a college education. She achieved this by the age of nineteen. What makes her story even more extraordinary is that she is deafblind.

With her permission, this story about Molly has been compiled using information she provided directly to Deafblind Information Australia, content on the Molly Watt website and other information publicly available.

Born with a severe hearing loss, Molly wore hearing aides and learned to speak. At age twelve her vision impairment was diagnosed. She was going blind due to Retinitis Pigmentosa (RP) and could expect loss of night vision and an increasing loss of peripheral vision “like looking at things through a straw”, as Molly described it. This particular combination of hearing and vision impairment is known as Usher Syndrome (Type II).

With the help of her family, Molly established a trust to raise funds for equipment to assist people with Usher Syndrome overcome the hurdles of participating in everyday tasks that others take for granted. The other main purpose of the trust was to raise awareness of Usher Syndrome.

“When people realise the daily struggles this condition brings they then realise how easy it is to make a difference.

We work so hard just to do the everyday things people take for granted, but I personally want to just be a valued member of society so I shall keep on keeping on in the hope that the little things I do make a positive difference to the usher community.

I believe science will find a way to help people with usher in one way or another at some stage so in the meantime raising awareness to enhance usher lives is what is important to me hence my creativity in art and making videos to express the importance of understanding this condition is what I do.”

Through the videos Molly has made, she shares with warmth, humour and humility, the day to day challenges of her life with Usher Syndrome … being misunderstood, disbelieved, falling over, being inadequately provided for, to the daily threat of hair-spraying her armpits. She also shares the positive difference others can make if they have some insight into her condition and are prepared to make the little changes necessary to support her and enable her to do things she is entirely capable of.

To find out more or to support the trust, go to http://www.mollywatt.com/