Tom Walker
Visual Impairment Trainer
Tom Walker is a trainer
Tom Walker is an accredited Sight Impairment Trainer for Toucan Diversity.
Tom has what is nowadays described as a ‘portfolio career’. In addition to working as a radio journalist and podcaster, Tom also delivers disability and communications training to a wide range of groups. These include university students, business people, children, and even people who have fallen foul of the law.
Tom obtained a 1st class honors degree in Psychology and has worked as a freelance BBC reporter, researcher, and producer, as well as a media relations specialist for central and local government.
Tom’s story
Tom Walker was born totally blind in Manchester, in the north-west of England, in April 1964. At the age of 3.5, Tom had an operation to remove the congenital cataract from his right eye, which gave him a small amount of useful vision. Tom can remember waking up from that operation and being able to see for the first time.
Sadly for Tom, his first experience of eyesight wasn’t one of the great visual wonders of the world, but a hospital ward replete with patients and nurses.
Doctors decided not to remove the cataract from Tom’s left eye in case they upset the progress they had made on his right eye. As a result, Tom remains totally blind in his left eye.
Tom was educated at the Royal School for the Blind in Liverpool and Worcester College for the Blind. Both schools were specialist residential schools and all of the pupils had some form of visual impairment. Initially, Tom was taught in Braille but as magnification improved and became more readily available, he transferred to print.
While at school, Tom obtained ten O levels and three A levels. He also took part in numerous extracurricular activities, including sports and drama.
After school, Tom obtained a 1st class honours degree in Psychology and has worked as a freelance BBC reporter, researcher, and producer, as well as a media relations specialist for central and local government.
In 2016, Tom took voluntary redundancy from his post as media manager for Lancashire County Council and now works for the BBC as a producer and reporter, on a freelance basis, along with producing podcasts and running communications and diversity training courses.
Tom’s interests include music, drama, politics, and sports. Tom is one of the founder members of FC United of Manchester.
Tom is also a keen, independent traveller. He has visited over 30 countries, including Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Colombia, Venezuela, Costa Rica, Cuba, and Mexico.
Tom says: “While being visually impaired provides me with numerous environmental and social challenges, I don’t allow my disability to prevent me from doing most of the things I want to do.
“There have been occasions however, especially when walking through the streets of Caracas in Venezuela, that I have wondered what on earth a visually impaired person is doing here on his own.
“Although I have travelled totally independently to a number of risky countries, especially in South and Central America, I have been fortunate so far and have survived unscathed; seeing a man walking alone with a white cane must be quite a temptation for pickpockets and criminals.”
Tom added, “You only get one life, and it isn’t a dress rehearsal. I firmly believe in making the most of it.”