We were delighted to welcome motivational speaker Fern Lulham to the Aniridia Network Conference 2018 in April. She gave a very uplifting presentation about her life with aniridia, which got a very positive reaction from the audience. She also took the time to chat with various delegates during the day, which they greatly appreciated.
Below you can see the video of Fern’s speech, followed by reactions to the conference from Fern and the delegates.
Fern is a regular contributor to the Kelly & Company show on AMI Audio in Canada, and she gave a wonderful review of the conference on the programme, which you can hear at the link below.
Hear Fern’s review of the conference
Fern also expressed her thanks on her Facebook & Twitter pages:
“Honoured and proud to speak at #ANUKConf about my life experiences, some things that I have learnt and a challenge to spread hope to everyone for a brighter future for us all! Thank you, Aniridia Network UK, I had an amazing day. #BeHopeful”
We also had a big response from our members who spoke to Fern and saw her presentation. Here are a selection of their comments:
“It’s hard to push past the nerves of being in a new place and new people and lots of noise to speak to many people to start with. I forced myself to talk to a lovely lady and her dad and her guide dog, who turned out to be speaking during the conference. Having that initial really positive interaction made a big difference to how I felt the rest of the day would go.”
“Fern gave a fantastic, positive, uplifting and passionate speech about living with aniridia, which inspired everybody in the room. It was great to finally meet her in person.”
“Fantastically inspiring speaker, Fern, talking about living with aniridia. She sounds and looks inspiring and showing us how much can be achieved. She went to the US on an exchange and graduated from there. Wonderful!”
“Thank you Fern for being an amazing speaker. I have a little girl with Aniridia and your talk yesterday was truly inspiring, uplifting, beautiful.”
“You were really awesome Fern, very well presented & moving. Well done!”
“Brilliant speech Fern. Totally agree what you said about Mr Hamada, my consultant, as well.”
We are therefore very grateful to Fern for attending the conference. Her inspiring speech and interaction with the delegates had a very positive impact and gave us all plenty to think about. Thank you Fern!
Many people with aniridia also have nystagmus, and this year’s 
I was born with aniridia and did the usual sports at comprehensive school. I was the only disabled person there never mind the only visually impaired pupil there. I never really liked playing rugby, football or cricket for the obvious reasons and lack of confidence, despite loving to watch the football on the telly and listening to the cricket on the radio.
People at Worcester Warriors Rugby Club are trying to develop an adapted version of rugby for the visually impaired/blind community called hugby. You tackle someone with a big friendly hug. I love this idea and it’s keeps being developing with ideas from both coaches and players.
Like everyone, we’ve got stuff in the house we don’t really need. So as part of a neighbourhood event we held a jumble sale in front of our house. The proceeds were split between our two favourite charities.
One of the speakers at this year’s conference was Thanos Papadimitropoulos from University of Liverpool. He told us about his team’s research, funded by 
Details of what our officials did between April 2017 and March 2018 are in the 
Aniridia Network 