On Thursday night, the ABC celebrated its 90th birthday by honoring an amazing blind newsreader who had made history.
On Thursday, a special live event was televised to celebrate the national broadcaster’s 90th birthday.
In it, they honored Nas Campanella, the first blind cadet journalist employed by ABC and the pioneer of using speech recognition software to deliver the news.
Campanella began her career at the ABC in 2011, and she has since worked as a newsreader for Triple J radio for more than seven years.
Many of her devoted listeners are still in disbelief when they learn the silky-toned presenter, who lost her sight at the age of six months, is blind.
She can only see some shadows and light because blood vessels at the back of her eyes burst when she was a baby, forcing them to separate from the retina.
She then learned that she has Charcot Marie Tooth condition, which causes delayed sensitivity in the hands and feet because of the nerve endings.
It meant that the motivated learner struggled in school and had trouble reading braille until she began utilizing computer software that transformed words into sounds.
The newscaster uses a laptop with voice software that reads out everything she enters and whatever her mouse hovers over while listening to four audio feeds through headphones.
The news is read aloud by her while she speaks into the microphone, grabs that have been packaged before airing, and a clock that indicates when to start and finish are among the four streams.
The technology still needs work, according to Campanella, who previously told Daily Mail Australia that it took her four years to perfect.
She stated in 2015, “I have to be careful not to fall too far behind.”
“I have to pronounce it a split second after I hear it, so it’s not a flawless method, but for the most part it works fairly well.”
Campanella has vowed to fight tenaciously for Australians who are disabled and has openly discussed how she sometimes receives unequal treatment.
On the ABC’s RN Breakfast program in 2020, she discussed a particular encounter with an inquisitive stranger that had stayed with her with host Fran Kelly.
The journalist felt a tap on her shoulder as she waited for a train.
She admitted that she was used to having strangers ask her very private questions regarding her vision.
“In this specific case, the individual ultimately told me that he would commit suicide if he were me. I was deeply saddened and shaken by it.
“Me and many others in the handicap community have worked so hard to change the unfavorable attitudes that others have about us and the value of our lives,” says the group.
Campanella continued by saying that having a lovely partner, wonderful friends, and a “amazing” work had not changed how she regarded her own life.
She claimed that the stranger’s remark had shown her how other people viewed Australians with disabilities and their lives.
The speaker claimed that hardly a single week goes by without a complete stranger asking her intimate questions about her eyes, and that she has occasionally been made to feel bad for declining to give them that information.
When she got her first job at the ABC, she admitted to Broadsheet that “there were tears.” According to her, the ABC was “ready to take a chance when no one else was.”
The gifted journalist gave birth to Lachie, her first child, early this year; she and her partner, ABC presenter Tom Oriti, also have a son.
The new mother recently told her Instagram followers that she read the news and had “story time” with her kid in a similar fashion.
She added, “Some people have been so nice as to record stories for me, even down to informing me when to turn the page.
I play the audio on my phone and tell Lachie what I hear.
After journeys to Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam, the voracious traveler previously told Daily Mail Australia that her dream career would be to write about travel.
She argued that using eyesight as a means of transportation was a limited perspective.
“You can talk about the meals you had, the friendliness of the locals, the smells all around you, and the sensation of the sand under your feet.”