I was 19 years old and a full-time medical student at university, playing for the football club.  On 14^th August 2024 I had a spinal stroke; it was completely random, the cause isn’t known.  At first I was very confused as I didn’t understand what was going on but afterwards things got clearer. My family were really worried and scared when it first happened. My parents stayed overnight at the hospital.

I heard about Aspire when I was in the Spinal Injury Centre at Stanmore and Adel, Aspire’s Assistive Technologist, was very helpful.  I needed to know how to use my iPhone and MacBook. Adel taught me how to use a Nano Head mouse and an IntegraMouse, Voice Control, Spoken Content (TalkBack), Apple’s inbuilt head pointer, Dwell click and facial gestures for mouse clicks.

Without assistive technology, I would have had to get other people to do everything for me and press every button, as they did before I met Adel. He helped me become more independent. I can now basically do everything I was doing before my injury and am glad that I don’t have to be reliant on other people.

Aspire’s Assistive Technology service is really good and has helped me a lot with the tech side of things.  I’m going to try and get a grant for the head tracker as it helped me a lot.

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