“My friends never treated me as ‘the blind friend’. They treated me as Sam.”

For Saima Ashraf MBE (BA Accounting and Finance, 2005; Lonsdale College), studying at Lancaster and a subsequent successful auditing career have come with a whole other set of challenges.

Saima acquired sight loss when she was a child and was registered blind at 17.

But she has not allowed this to stop her as she took her Lancaster degree and used her experience in Bailrigg to build a reputation as a respected auditor.

Her efforts have earned a range of accolades – culminating in an MBE in the King’s Birthday Honours List in 2024 for her work with Merseyside Police, whom she joined thinking she would be there for a year before ‘falling in love’ with the work.

At the centre of it all has been a positive approach – ‘I'm a real problem-solver. I always find the solution,’ she says – and a commitment to inclusivity. It is something that started when she came to Lancaster – having fallen in love with the campus during a summer school.

Saima hails the positive support she received from the University and from friends who would walk with her to lectures after 4pm when her night blindness affected her more, and who would make sure she was not left behind on nights out dancing.

“Lancaster was the beginning of my journey around inclusivity,” says Saima, who collected her MBE at Buckingham Palace in December. “In my first week, I invited somebody from the RNIB (Royal National Institute of Blind People), and the disabilities officer, and I went to my head of year in accounting and finance, and I set out what my support needs were. That was the start, and throughout the time I was there, Lancaster gave me all the support I needed.

“One of the fondest memories I have, is to do with my exam results. I miss the ability to read my exam results myself. My GCSE results, I opened them and somebody else read them to me, the same for A-Levels. I was never the first person to know my results.

I mentioned it to the two secretaries in the department, Andrea and Jill, when I was in my second year. I forgot about it, but at the end of the final year, they put your degree classification up on a noticeboard, but my name was not there.

“I went to the office, and Andrea and Jill were sat there. I told them my name wasn’t there. Andrea said to me ‘Do you remember, you said to me a couple of years ago, one of the biggest things that you missed was reading your results.’ Andrea handed me this A4 envelope. I opened it up, there was an A3 sheet in there, and in the biggest text they could fit on that sheet, it said 2:1. It's such a little thing, but it meant so much to me.”

Saima carried her positive attitude to talking with people about her disability through her career – first at the Audit Commission and now with Merseyside Police.

Her sight is now worse than when she studied at Lancaster. When she was 25, she developed cataracts and now has only light perception. “I could tell you in a room where there are windows, I can see if the lights are on or off, and that is pretty much it,” she says.

Saima uses screen readers on her phone and laptop, and uses touch-typing developed before she lost her sight. She can do this having had the self-assurance to make sure others know her needs. It is a long way from her University days, when she earned the nickname ‘Miss Nokia’ for using a mobile phone after memorising the layout and the sounds of the beeps from all the keys.

“That support I had at Lancaster built my confidence to get to the point where then I could ask an employer what I need,” says Saima, whose nephew – for whom Saima is guardian after her sister passed away – is now a student at Lancaster. “Because I had that experience, and I didn’t have a negative experience, I had built that resilience and confidence.

“I've continued this in all my life in everything that I do, the openness, because I had a successful journey through Lancaster.

“The best thing you can do as a disabled person is to talk about it, to share with others what you can and can’t do, what support you need. Once you get to that point where you're open with others, the sooner people around you will accept that, they will treat you normally.”

In her early career, as the only blind person doing Chartered Public Finance Accountancy exams, Saima encountered difficulties as the system was not set up for a blind student. She had to wait several years to start before the Board became accessible.

She works to ensure other people do not encounter such difficulties and is Chair of the Disability Support Network for Merseyside Police, influencing change within her own force and nationally.

“I'm really passionate about being an advocate for disability,” Saima asserts.

For her work, she was named Merseyside Police’s employee of the year in 2021; was highly commended in the civil servant of the year category at the British Muslim Awards in 2022; and won inspirational person of the year at the Disability in Policing Conference the same year.

The honours were topped with the MBE.

“Getting an MBE for services to policing came as the biggest shock of my life. I never expected it. I knew I was well respected at Merseyside, but to get the endorsement with the MBE nomination was extremely humbling.

“I am from a working-class background. My parents migrated here from Pakistan. My dad worked as a weaver in the cotton mills. My mum worked in the denim factories. They lived through difficult times. It’s now 55 years since my dad came here, and he was extremely proud to join me at Buckingham Palace to collect my MBE.”

Saima (front centre) and her friends from the United Nations Association at Lancaster University