Matthew Atkinson

I was twenty-three and I’d been on my first ever trip to the US, which is very car-centric. I was terrified the whole time. I’m vision impaired and I had to have people help me cross the road. I remember getting back and saying “oh, thank God I’m back here”. And then a week later I got run over.

Basically I was at a crossing. One lane of traffic stopped for the lights, the other didn’t and I, for whatever reason, just assumed that because one lane had stopped, the other one would, and that was that really. It was a horrific ordeal for my parents, who have always been my safety net and solid ground. It’s probably a thousand times worse for parents than it is for the person going through it. All the time, despite everything, they stayed positive: ‘we can do this, we’ll help you get there’. They never came and said ‘this is so difficult.’ I still don’t think I appreciate all that they actually had to do behind the scenes.

A&E records23.08.2006

23 year old male pedestrian was crossing on a pedestrian crossing – hit by car 40 to 50 miles per hour. Hypotensive in ambulance. One litre of fluids given pre hospital. Previous medical history visually impaired. On examination obvious bilateral below knee tibia and fibula fractures. Pain right arm. Extensive grazing. Query head injury – blood over face. No loss of consciousness. Glasgow Coma Scale 14-15 out of 15 throughout [1].

Because of it being the liability of the driver that hit me, there was the support there to keep me going. My solicitor was a very lucky find. He does a lot of good stuff and really sticks up for people. He arranged for all sorts of care that was above and beyond what would have happened naturally.

The British Red Cross got equipment for me to physically get back to work and the department at the university that was responsible for disabled students also looked after me very well. We had a longstanding relationship but this was a lot more effort on their part. They organised some one-to-one counselling about things that happened surrounding the accident. Then I got offered this course on the management of stress, which used a form of Cognitive Behaviour Therapy and was phenomenally helpful. The first thing they said was “it’s not just you, it’s everyone, it’s a very common thing.” It was about monitoring yourself for signs of stress or anxiety and nipping it in the bud before it becomes an issue. I got so panicked from having to play catch-up I was really starting to freak out. It still occasionally happens now if I don’t put a lid on it.

I wouldn’t be here without my housemate. He used to drive me about anywhere I needed to go as I couldn’t use public transport; used to do the shopping, used to get the cleaning sorted. He’d say, “you need to get checked out because you are forgetting stuff and you are getting mixed up in the order in which things happen.” My parents noticed it as well and nudged me in the direction of finding out more about it. That was helpful because I wasn’t really sure if it was a thing or not – you can’t get out of your own head to analyse stuff.

I was never diagnosed with a specific brain injury. I think there were various Glasgow Coma Scale readings and it was up and down over time, as you could imagine if it’s someone that was flaking in and out. So that’s what I know for sure. It was probably not a huge physical trauma but definitely a big shock to the brain because of being concussed.

I assume some of the loss of memory afterwards is because your brain decides it’s probably best you don’t remember that sort of thing. I have gaps in my memory of the time before the accident as well. Like, way before it. I’ve forgotten people and stuff. I went through a stage where so much was changing and so fast – I was in halls and then I went back after the accident and lived in an adapted place and then I was living with other people – and I just got so confused about who everybody was. Telling a friend about this thing that I went to that was really good, and they went – “I took you there!”

I eventually had an MRI scan to see if there was anything specific but they just said anything we had seen was consistent with someone who has had a bump to the head. There was no physically obvious injury or specific area of the brain where there was a problem. It was this compound thing of having the bump on the head and then the whole experience of not being able to understand my work and the knock-on effect of that.

Because of the support I had, I was eventually able to complete my PhD and I’m now in full-time work. Managing stress and having to write stuff down to remember to do it are basically the only problems I have got now.

Mobile technology has improved dramatically in recent years and that has really helped. I depend on that stuff to get around independently because of my vision impairment, and it has completely changed my life. There are a myriad train, tube and bus navigation apps that help you plan a journey and then find the right platform or bus. And just having a map app on the smartphone, with the satellite view, is helpful for planning routes and road crossings.

Over time, my ability to retain information has improved dramatically, but l ask my phone to remind me to do everything because it might just slip.

This watch is amazing. If you’re going somewhere for the first time, you’ll tell it where you want to go and instead of having to walk around looking on the phone and thus walking into things, it lets you know when to turn left and right. You just keep walking forward and it taps you in a certain way to go left and it taps you in a certain way to go right. And I just thought that was fantastic – that I can wander round and it’s like I know where I’m going in a place I’ve never been before.

Unfortunately you have to zoom in on the screen and pan around if you want to look at the small text, so it’s not as accessible in other ways.

Something that really impressed me was a thing Microsoft have been working on for many years and kept completely secret. They just unveiled this headset called HoloLens. Nothing’s been confirmed yet but it has amazing potential. The idea is you wear it and it shows you the real world but it can add stuff to it. So if you get a text message it might project that in front of you. But it’ll also know that a particular piece of wall in your field of vision is flat and doesn’t have anything on it and it’ll project it as if there was a telly on that wall with your text message on it. But in theory you can do anything.

One example the developer gives is helping someone fix their plumbing remotely. The expert can draw arrows to show which tool to use on which pipe – on the actual pipes, as the person’s doing the work! And they could watch the repair as it happens and be talking you through it. I think it could be transformative for accessibility. Imagine how it could help people with cognitive impairments. Google Glass, an earlier, similar but more passive technology, could remind people when to take which pills, but this thing might be able to help otherwise very capable people who get confused between left and right, or to assist people remembering the steps involved in cooking by literally pointing them in the right direction, to the right tools – perhaps even highlighting surfaces and items that might be hot, or need to be cleaned before use. People could get so much independence from it. Like I did when I got the iPhone. It’s going to be brilliant.