VI Confidence Academy — A New Visual Impairment CPD Course, Coming Soon

Hi, and thanks for stopping by. I'm AJ, and yes, I'm blind. I'm also a dad. I do the school run, I cook, and I go to the gym. I captained the England Blind Football team. I've worked inside businesses like Dolphin, one of the UK's leading assistive technology companies, helping shape how technology reaches the people who need it most. And I run my entire working day on a screen reader, usually faster than people expect. I share all of that because when most people hear the words "visual impairment," they picture something very specific and very limited. That gap between what people picture and what life with visual impairment actually looks like? That's where the problems start. In workplaces. In services. In everyday interactions. Rarely through any bad intention, just through not knowing. That's exactly what I've built the VI Confidence Academy to change. Why CPD in this area matters more than you might think Visual impairment affects around 2 million people in the UK, and that number is rising. The professionals who support them in health and social care, education, employment, customer services, and beyond are often doing their best with almost no formal grounding in what visual impairment actually means day-to-day. Standard awareness training, when it exists at all, tends to be surface level: a bit of jargon, a blindfold exercise, a tick in a box. It rarely translates into the kind of confident, practical understanding that makes a real difference to someone's experience. Genuine CPD in visual impairment isn't a nice-to-have. It's a professional gap that directly impacts the people you serve, and one that's rarely filled well. VI Confidence Academy is designed to fill it properly. What the course actually is This is a practical, CPD-accredited course built entirely from lived experience and years of delivering interactive awareness training in the field, the kind of sessions where real questions get asked, assumptions get challenged, and people leave with something they can actually use. It's structured as a series of short, focused modules: * What visual impairment really is, and why the picture in most people's heads is far too narrow * Why different doesn't mean less, reframing ability, independence and what support actually looks like * Communication that genuinely helps, practical language, practical behaviour, no awkwardness * Technology, tools and the barriers no one talks about, the assistive tech landscape, and the invisible friction that builds up when it's ignored * Getting inclusion right before someone walks through the door, environments, processes and policies that work from the start * From awareness to action, turning understanding into confident, consistent practice No jargon for its own sake. No theory without purpose. Just clear, honest, usable learning, the kind that sticks because it comes from someone who's lived it. A note on CPD accreditation The course is currently going through formal CPD accreditation. I want to be straight with you: for the early-access group, your CPD certificate will follow once that accreditation is confirmed. I'd rather tell you that honestly up front than overpromise. The learning is the same either way; the paperwork just follows shortly behind. Here's where you come in The course is coming soon. I'm not rushing it; I want it to be right. If you register your interest below, you'll be the first to know the moment it goes live. And for the people who back it early: the first 20 people to register will get completely free access, before anyone else. All I ask in return is that you go through it properly and share honest feedback: what landed, what could be clearer, roughly how long it took. That input shapes everything that comes after. If this sounds like something you, your team or your organisation needs, drop your details in below. I'll only be in touch about the course and the academy, and you can unsubscribe any time. Thanks for being here.