Two Ayrshire women receive MBEs for services to Blind and Partially sighted community
Norma Baillie and Hazel McFarlane will both receive MBEs for King Charles' Birthday Honours
Two Ayrshire women are set to receive MBEs for King Charles Birthday Honours.
Norma Baillie and Hazel McFarlane are among dozens of Scots who are being recognised for their services or outstanding achievements within their community.
Norma, 55, and Hazel, 57, are both being awarded with MBEs for their services to blind and partially sighted people across Scotland and the rest of the UK.
They are the only two people within the Ayrshire region to be given the title this year.
Norma Baillie
Norma is the founder of Saltcoats based company PrioritEyes Ltd. After going blind at the age of 9 with a rare degenerative condition called Stargardt disease, she decided to turn her negative experience of growing up without vision into a positive to help others in her situation.
In her role at PrioritEyes, Norma has spent three decades delivering front-line training that enables those living with all levels of sight impairment to gain independence and confidence.
Norma tells Greatest Hits Radio: “To begin with being given this, I didn’t think it was real. It is an honour to be recognised for what I’ve done.
“Growing up I found it quite difficult to find support and to speak to people who understood what it was like to lose your sight. So, I suppose I’ve used my negative experience in the past and turned it into something positive.
“There still needs to be a much higher awareness for the support that should be available to people, and unfortunately it is still a postcode lottery for who does and doesn’t receive support.”
Hazel McFarlane
Hazel McFarlane works as a Development Officer with the Royal National Institute of Blind People.
Born prematurely, Hazel was visually impaired from birth. She only had sight in one eye and that was limited, and in her 20’s it deteriorated before going completely blind within the space of 10 minutes when she was 41.
Hazel has spent her full working life rejecting barriers placed on her as a partially sighted person and was involved in disability activism from a young age and played a role in culminating the Disability Discrimination Act of 1995 becoming statute.
She was acknowledged in the Disability Power list of 'the 100 Most Influential Disabled People in the UK’ for her work in helping people with little or no sight.
During Hazel’s time as a Development Officer and later a Research and Policy Officer with RNIB Scotland, she has contributed to the development of Scottish Government Sensory Policy, and also set up a vision support service on her home island of Arran.
She was nominated to represent the Scottish sight loss sector on the Scottish Government’s Human Rights and Disability Task Force, where she supported the proposal to incorporate the UN Convention on the Rights of Disabled People into Scottish Law.
She tells Greatest Hits Radio: “I thought I was only nominated for this, but after a while was told I was receiving one. I’m a bit overwhelmed but absolutely delighted to be recognised.
“In terms of having a barrier free society we still have a way to go. I would like to see a world where children and young people who are blind or partially sighted don’t encounter those barriers and they fulfil their potential.
“I just want to make a difference, and I just want to change things for people who are coming up behind me. So that’s my drive, I want to do nothing less than change the world, but there will still always be work to do.”