BATTLING LEE'S TOP HONOUR

For most students, getting a good degree would be reward enough for three hard years of study.

But for father-of-two Lee Cawkwell, 29, getting an upper second marks the end of years of pain and heartache.

Lee, of Coble Landing, South Shields, was diagnosed with the condition Leber's Optic Atrophy just after his 20th birthday. Less than six months later he went blind.
It meant he had to give up his first and only car as well as his job in the family business Cawkwell's Glass.

After being registered blind Lee went to an employment assessment centre run by the Royal National Institute for the Blind (RNIB) in Scotland.
He learned how to word process using a speech synthesiser on a computer and completed a computer programming course. He started a business computing degree in 1993 at Sunderland University, and it looked as if life was looking up again.
Then disaster struck. He severed three tendons when he fell through a glass panel and had to have two operations, which cost him much of the movement in one hand.
He had to defer his course so threw himself into a number of voluntary groups, including the VIP Friendship Group, the Visually Impaired South Tyneside Association, the Visually Impaired Football Club and Vista.

He decided he would rather work with people than machines and the following year, Lee enrolled at Sunderland University again, this time to do a two-year diploma in social work.
With the help of a £2,500 handout from Dame Catherine Cookson, who was also losing her sight, he bought a speech reader to help with his studies.
He netted a diploma in social work in 1999 and transferred to a BA (Hons) course last September.

This summer Lee got a 2:1 degree. He's now doing a course learning how to use new speech interpretation software on his computer, and is determined to help disabled people.