Blind entrepreneur hopes Fenland MP joins pledge to break down stigma
Ibraheem Iqbal started losing his sight aged 11
Last updated 8th Dec 2025
A Cambridgeshire man who lost his sight as a teenager believes more should be done to give blind people the same access to education as those without vision.
Ibraheem Iqbal was registered blind aged 14, three years after starting to notice his sight worsening.
He was first diagnosed with keratoconus, a condition resulting in deformation of the cornea before finding out he also had cone-rod dystrophy, for which there is currently no cure.
"I had teachers who weren't supporting me in the right way," Ibraheem said.
"Growing up and going into my early teens, at that time you're at GCSEs, learning social skills, so it was a lot to cope with and a very challenging time, trying to figure out how to cope with my eyesight and excel with my education."
After leaving school, Ibraheem - now 27 - played blind football for West Bromwich Albion and joined up with the England squad.
He then applied for a place at the Royal National College for the Blind (RNCB).
Expectation
"I went from having many expectations to not having any expectation," Ibraheem said.
After writing several emails to faculty members and advice from charities, Ibraheem relied on audiobooks to help improve his reading and speaking.
While at the RNCB in his first year, Ibraheem studied a personal training course and focussed on his career in blind football.
After that year, he applied to study A-Levels at the college but was turned down due to missing out on much of his secondary education.
To pay for private tuition in the meantime, Ibraheem made and sold food and eventually managed to study A-Levels at the RNCB, where he got an A* and two Bs.
During his time there, Ibraheem worked with local sight loss charities to support children with vision loss and their families.
"I was very ambitious as a child and I didn't want to let my eyesight be a barrier to what I could achieve; in the schools, there was no one specifically pushing me," he said.
"It was like 'come in, do your best', whereas when I was sighted before, the difference is you've got people pushing you to achieve the best you can in education."
'There's a lot of stereotypes'
After leaving the RNCB, Ibraheem moved onto the University of Liverpool to study psychology - achieving a first class honours degree - and helped with measures such as designing one-to-one mentoring provision, and a change to the way course materials were produced and distributed.
Since his graduation, he's gone onto building a healthcare business management firm and from his experiences, wants to address the barriers that people living with disabilities face in accessing both education and employment.
"There's a lot of stereotypes when you have a disability, and my eyesight has got to the point where I can only see light, dark and shadows," Ibraheem said.
"Going back into education, it was challenging and I think access to education is a problem across the country."
Research by the Royal National Institute of Blind People found that by 2035, the number of people in the UK living with sight loss will increase by 27%.
In the second quarter of this year, 53% of disabled people were employed compared to 83% of non-disabled people.
A study led by the University of Birmingham made recommendations on how higher education institutions can better support the needs of students with a visual impairment.
Some of the findings include:
- Providing targeted support for the period from school to university and what adjustments need to be made
- Improving the visibility and awareness of mental wellbeing services to students through better engagement between staff and students
- Adopting policies that focus on a more personal approach and that not every visually impaired student will have the same needs.
The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has said its 'Connect to Work' programme will provide 300,000 sick or disabled people with help to get into work by the end of the decade.
“We are committed to breaking down barriers to opportunity for disabled people," a DWP spokesperson said.
“That’s why we are partnering with more than 70 employers to reshape how health issues and disabilities are managed in the workplace, alongside our £1 billion a year investment in employment support for disabled people by the end of the decade.”
Ibraheem is hoping to set up a network of people including his local MP Steve Barclay, educators and organisations across Cambridgeshire to help give people like him the tools to overcome barriers they may face.
"There's support these universities have, and I had so many meetings with them (University of Liverpool) to make my degree as accessible as possible, but not everyone has that.
"Everybody has so much potential to get a degree, to have an education, to work, but the big problem is there's not a lot of support out there.
"It's about having the right support to allow you to receive the same education as anyone else," he added.