Commonwealth athlete wins award
Prue Watt and Dawson Ko use a Daisy player to listen to audio books.
25 March 2006
Prue Watt, 19, has been vision impaired since birth, but she has never let this hold her back.
Last week, at the Commonwealth games in Melbourne, Prue swam a personal best in the Elite Athletes with a Disability (EAD) 100m freestyle competition.
" I was thrilled with my performance last weekend. It has been wonderful to have the opportunity to compete as part of the main event and in front of such a huge crowd," said Prue.
Prue dreams of a career in which she can share her passion for sport and encourage young people with disabilities to strive for their goals.
This year, thanks to a Further Education Bursary Award from Vision Australia, she is one step closer to achieving this goal as she takes the plunge and embarks on a Bachelor of Science at the University of Newcastle.
The Vision Australia Further Education Bursary Award program assists people who are blind or vision impaired to participate in further education through the provision of adaptive technology. Since1996 over 103 awards have been made to students studying a wide variety of courses.
Adaptive technology enables people who are blind or vision impaired to be able to access print information. It includes devices such as computers with speech output, electronic braille terminals and equipment for electronically scanning printed material.
Prue will use her award to purchase a laptop computer, a printer, a scanner, a voice recorder and the software Zoomtext that magnifies text and reads information from the computer.
"Prue is a great example of a young blind person who is following their dreams, says Vision Australia's Chief Executive Officer, Gerard Menses. "We are proud to have assisted her to get to where she is today - a woman who is living the life she chooses and achieving great things along the way."
Her Excellency Professor Marie Bashir AC, Governor of NSW will present the award ceremony at Government House on 30 March.