Disabled Hero wins Oxford place
A severely handicapped teenager who cannot walk, talk or hold a paintbrush has won a place at Oxford to study fine art.
Hero Joy Nightingale, 16, who communicates through hand movements, is to be given assistants to paint and sculpt on her behalf. Her mother Pauline Reid 'translated' for her daughter during interviews for the place at Magdalen College.
The teenager is the most severely handicapped student ever to be granted a place at Oxford. She suffers from 'locked-in syndrome', a profound apraxia caused by brain damage that renders her body useless and her voice mute.
She is unlikely ever to be able to walk, feed or care for herself but, thanks to the efforts of her mother, she can communicate. When Hero was four, Pauline devised a complicated system of hand gestures that equate to the alphabet.
By dictating to her mother, Hero has created an internet magazine, From the Window, which contains articles by George Carey, Melvyn Bragg, Margaret Atwood and Kofi Annan - all of whom she has cajoled into writing for her.
A spokesperson for Oxford said: 'The university welcomes applications from students with disabilities. In cases where students are profoundly disabled, there may be many issues that need to be carefully addressed before an individual can take up a place, such as establishing how the student can best be taught and examined.'
Hero, who suffers almost daily epileptic fits and has a hole in her heart, has not attended school since she was six. She has been taught at home by her mother and father, the pro-vice chancellor of Kent University.
Peter Giles, her art tutor until last year, said she has a genuine talent for art. 'She is ferociously gifted. We would sit together and her mother would grab her daughter's hand and then we would begin work,' he said.
Together, they built several modern sculptures from plaster and metal. 'The instructions would take a while to decipher. But eventually, they would come, and eventually make sense.'
Hero's classes will be held at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art.
Magdalen alumni include William Hague, Seamus Heaney and Oscar Wilde. |