Blind couple say sight loss is no barrier to love

A blind couple from Scarborough have said they hope the story of their upcoming marriage can inspire other visually impaired people who are nervous about dating.

Malcolm Day and Sarah Brooks are due to tie the knot in September after meeting on holiday in Blackpool in June 2024.

They will marry a year to the day since Sarah, who became visually impaired in 2016, made the 260-mile (418km) trip from Winchester in Hampshire to the North Yorkshire coast to live with Malcolm.

Sarah said: "I was calling it love at first sight and trying to do everything to make sure Malcolm felt the same, but I didn't have to work that hard."

The pair originally met at an event attended by 80 visually impaired people at a hotel in Blackpool, according to Malcolm, who has been blind since he was 14.

"I knew two or three people in the group. They'd invited me along and said, 'come and have a good time. You'll meet some new people'," he explained.

"I never intended meeting someone like Sarah."

Malcolm said he proposed to Sarah during a karaoke night in June last year when they returned to the seaside resort for another holiday a year after they first met.

"We'd decided we were going to do Sonny and Cher's I Got You Babe," he said.

"I completely messed it up because my mind was somewhere else. I was distracted by thinking, 'I've got this ring in my pocket'.

"There's a line in the song that says, 'she wears my ring'. So when I got down on one knee I said, 'there's something in that song I'm going to put right'.

Remembering that moment, Sarah said: "I didn't know at all, I didn't see it coming."

In September, the couple bought a house together in Scarborough, where Malcolm is originally from, and that is where they live now with their three dogs.

"In the last three or four months, we've been discovering each other's eyesight as two blind people," Malcolm said.

"I've learned a lot about what Sarah can see, and Sarah has learned a lot about what I can see.

"We joke to people that we have one good eye between us."

Sarah said that for their wedding in September, her bridesmaids would all be visually impaired.

"My friends, my lovely, lovely blind girlfriends - nine of them - will be on the bridesmaid list," she said.

"Mostly, it's a big blind community getting together."

Irena Valchera, who is visually impaired and works for social inclusion charity Eye Matter, and who will also be one of Sarah's nine bridesmaids, said many of the organisation's members had found dating a tough challenge.

"It must be very difficult to overcome that shyness or thinking, 'maybe I am not good enough'," she said.

"It must be very scary and isolating.

"We have in Eye Matter young people who I know are suffering because of that."

However, Malcolm and Sarah said they wanted their successful relationship to inspire other blind people who were nervous about meeting new people.

"Everybody has something that holds them back. Sight loss doesn't have to be that thing," said Sarah.

"We can still get out there. We can still do it. We can still go on a blind date."

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