A teenager from Broughton has been nominated for a National Diversity Award.

Ava Jolliffe, 17, is deafblind and a wheelchair user and she has been nominated for the Positive Role Model Award for Disability for her efforts in changing perceptions of Deafblindness.

Alongside this, she has also been nominated for an All 4 Inclusion award, for disability personality of the year.

The National Diversity Award is dependent on public votes, with the winner being announced in Liverpool in October and Ava is the only DeafBlind Disabled nominee.

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She said: “In spite of my complexities, I can and achieve, and want to improve understanding around the often misunderstood notion of being DeafBlind.”

Ava creates digital art using her tablet and aims to raise awareness through social media. Ava will be opening her third solo art exhibition starting at Garstang Arts Centre on 2 May

Her latest show, ‘Paper View’ is a collection of able and disabled people from mixed backgrounds, promoting the message that art is not just for the visually able in both creation and contemplation.

She said: “This is to show that art is subjective, art does discriminate because we accept an image at face value, and create our own unique internal dialogue for each picture as we should do in life, while being accepting of all people equally.”

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Ava has been described as “arguably one of the most important and influential Deafblind people to come into the media arena”.

On top of all her achievements she still has more planned such as creating a new art project with The Deaf Village.

Without using a BSL interpreter she has considerably less ability than others to be physically vocal, however, Ava is not allowing this challenge to get in her way. As well as her artwork, she is locating a publisher for her 1st children’s book aimed at increasing inclusion and understanding of deafness in children’s literature.

Ava is clinically extremely vulnerable. She was told she would not live past age seven due to the rare disorder Brown-Vialetto-Van Laere syndrome.

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The National Diversity Awards is an event which celebrates the achievements of communities, charities and role models that tackle the issues in today’s society, giving recognition for their dedication and hard work.

You can vote for Ava for the Positive Role Model Award for Disability here.

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