Blind teen Eleanor 'buzzing' to join BBC Children in Need choir — from tactile books to the National Theatre

Blind teen Eleanor 'buzzing' to perform on the Children in Need stage

Eleanor is a bright, cheeky and very funny 14-year-old who gets around with a white cane she affectionately calls Mike, after the actor Michael Caine.

When she was three, doctors discovered an inoperable brain tumour — a Low Grade Hypothalamic Glioma — which damaged her optic nerves and left her severely sight-impaired. She can distinguish light from dark but cannot make out faces or fine detail.

Eleanor says she is "buzzing" to join this year’s BBC Children in Need choir, which will perform in the fundraising show on 14 November. Far from nervous, her mother Kelly says Eleanor "grabs every opportunity she's given" and, having been through so much, "doesn't stress over the little things."

For most of her 14 years Eleanor has spent long periods in hospital for scans, tests, neurosurgery and chemotherapy. Her family first realised something was wrong just before she was due to start school, when she began dropping things, asking about colours and becoming more clingy on walks. An optician's check led to urgent hospital tests and the diagnosis that changed their lives.

"I try not to be negative because a lot of negative stuff has happened to me, but I don't want to focus on that. I want to focus on all the good stuff that I'm doing." — Eleanor

Her father Tim says Eleanor likes pigeons because their dark shapes stand out against lighter pavements, and she cheerfully demonstrated pigeon coos during a meeting for BBC Radio London's 1,000 Mile Challenge — a three-legged walk around the country.

How tactile books helped

Eleanor is one of the young people to benefit from Living Paintings, a charity supported by BBC Children in Need donations. Living Paintings runs Touch to See, a free postal library of tactile, raised artwork books. Those textured books — featuring characters such as Julia Donaldson's Superworm and Spot the Dog — "opened my imagination," Eleanor says, "because suddenly it was open to my fingertips."

For filming, the charity sent a box of titles and Eleanor smiled as she read Braille and explored tactile illustrations. "There's so much detail on this — like, the nose and the eyes are smoother than the face and ears. And you wouldn't think about that," she explained. Her father adds that tactile art helped her "to learn things through that method of tactile art, to further her knowledge on things she wouldn't be able to see."

Performance, narration and resilience

Eleanor is a confident performer. She has played Tiny Tim in productions of A Christmas Carol at the Old Vic and voiced Lark, an animated character in Milo on Channel 5. Last year the BBC followed her as she prepared to deliver a live audio description of The Witches at the National Theatre — a role usually performed by sighted artists.

She takes weekly singing lessons, which she describes as "just a little bit of time away from stressful school and everything else that's going on." Without major medical breakthroughs, doctors say Eleanor is unlikely to regain her sight and the tumour will remain unless a cure is found. She continues to have regular scans and will likely require treatment into her teens and twenties.

Despite the ongoing challenges, Eleanor remains upbeat and determined to make the most of opportunities in performance and everyday life.

Coverage produced for the 1,000 Mile Challenge for Children in Need.

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