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TAKING a bow during the week were students from St Brigid’s Presentation Secondary School in Killarney whose invention to help blind and vision-impaired people in their daily lives received countywide plaudits.

Under the guidance of their teacher Miriam Malone, Shannon Hanafin, Eisha Ghani and Fionnghuala Miller created the Blind Navigation and Obstacle Detector Stick and their efforts saw them rewarded with the coveted biomedical award at the SciFest in the Institute of Technology Tralee on Thursday last.

“There are about 39 billion blind people and 246 million visually impaired people around the world so we made a Blind Navigation and Obstacle Detector Stick to solve the problems faced by the blind people in their daily life. The system also takes measures to ensure their safety through the GPS,” stated the girls.
They will now go forward to the national final which will take place in Dublin in September. “We wish Shannon, Fionnghuala and Eisha as well as their teacher Ms Miriam Malone the very best of luck,” said St Brigid’s deputy principal Mairead Lucey.
 

 
Teacher Miriam Malone, Shannon Hanafin, Eisha Ghani and Fionnghuala Miller.