Appeal launched to help blind mum-of-four in Milton Keynes who can’t see her children's gorgeous faces

A mum who started to go blind weeks after her daughter was born is pinning her hopes on an AI ‘magic eye’ to help her live independently again.

Victoria Holder, 32, began to have vision problems with stage 3 retinopathy in early 2020, caused by complications with Type 1 diabetes.

Despite five surgeries and numerous laser treatments, her eyes became worse. The crunch came when she suffered a retina detachment just weeks after the birth of her fourth daughter two years ago.

Today Victoria is almost totally blind in one eye and, even with big thick lenses, can only see vague shapes with the other.

“She can’t see our children’s faces,” said her partner Christopher Oliver. “Our youngest daughter is two and Victoria has not seen her face since she was a newborn baby.”

Christopher has had to give up work to care for Victoria and the girls, who are aged between two and 15, at their Wolverton home. But the couple, after much investigating, have now come up with a solution to help her become more independent – in the form of a special device called OrCam MyEye.

“It’s an AI device that is wearable on specs and audibly reads things in front of you. It has facial recognition and generally helps people such as myself to do every day tasks independently,” said Victoria.

The OrCam MyEye is expensive and she and Christopher have set up a fundraising appeal for £5,000 to help pay for it. So far they have raised over £500.

You can view the GoFundMe appeal here.

Meanwhile Victoria has another two surgeries scheduled for her eyes.

"I’m hopeful for at least a little bit of positive change , but I’m also being realistic that I will unfortunately have a visual impairment for the rest of my life,” she said.

She is hoping her story will help other visually impaired people.

“I hope it helps others going through something similar or those of you that are supporting someone like myself in the earlier stages,” she said. ️