Lack of eyesight did not deter Toledo student
Last Thursday we reported the significant increase in the number of high school and sixth form students who were awarded certificates for having passed their C.X.C. exams. One of those students is eighteen year old Richard Genus of Punta Gorda. Though totally blind, Genus attained an impressive six passes in the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate Exams as a student of Toledo Community College. Genus was born with full sight but soon developed glaucoma and completely lost his vision at the age of eleven. While he has proven that his blindness is not a barrier to success, Genus did not do it alone as the Belize Council for the Visually Impaired provided crucial support along the way.
Richard Genus, Blind student who attained six C.X.C. passes
“I study by brail, I type the notes or I also record it and listen to it over and study it like that.”
Marion Ali
“What you’ve done was really set the pace for other people out there with special needs like yourself. What’s the message that you’d like to send to those people?”
Richard Genus
“The message is that they should continue to achieve the best no matter what comes in their way, like for me it was my blindness but I overcome that and I feel proud of myself. You can do this too. Anyone who has any disability or something they can do it also; if I could, they could.”
Christa Courtenay, Human Resource & Public Relations Manager, B.C.V.I.
“There’s lots of things that we do and it all start with a lot of outreach. Throughout the country we have primary eye care clinics located so we go out and do a lot of screening so when we come across students such as Richard, who have a visual impairment or who are born blind etc., they then are put through our rehabilitation programme if they, of course, agree to participate. One of the things that the rehabilitation programme provides is an educational component so we work really hard to get the visually impaired and blind children integrated into regular school classrooms so they’re not held back, because a lot of times vision is their only impairment, so mentally they can handle the work and everything. They just need the accommodation such as books, like school books, transferred into brail and large print and then the way they learn is a little bit different so we have rehabilitation or itinerant teachers.”
Genus told News Five that he will now move on to study primary education at the University of Belize next January.
