The Voice: From blind audition to dancing blind on live TV

The Voice finalist Andrea Begley has 10% vision. Her progress through the BBC talent show has been a crash-course in learning to dance and how to negotiate a busy TV set.

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Tonight, Matthew, I'm going to be an unconvincing Andrea Corr who stands still”

Emma's imagined Stars In Their Eyes line

At 15, I requested an application pack for Stars in Their Eyes, the big TV talent show of the 1990s. But my family's sensible questions about how I, a blind teenager, would manage to perform on television, stopped me from entering.

I thought I'd be great... but they thought I'd have problems with some of the basics like facial expression, dancing and even facing the camera.
This Saturday, 26 year-old Andrea Begley, who is almost blind, will be in the final of TV talent show The Voice UK. Every time she has appeared on the programme, I've really wanted to know how she copes behind the scenes, and whether I should have gone ahead and tried performing on TV when I was a teenager.
The Northern Irish singer-songwriter is no stranger to the stage - but it's a different challenge to television and a very different craft, she tells me down the phone while getting her nails done before a rehearsal.
The part she dislikes most? The dancing. Begley says blind people don't have any concept of what their dance moves look like to others. "I'm always afraid to do it in case I look stupid," she says.

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Disabled people in talent shows

• Jack Carroll(cerebral palsy, pictured above) - finalist in 2013's Britain's Got Talent
• Wheelchair dance duo Strictly Wheels - semi-finalists in Britain's Got Talent, 2012
• Susan Boyle (learning difficulties) - finalist in 2009's Britain's Got Talent
• The late Kerry McGregor (wheelchair user) - went out in third week of X Factor 2006 live finals

I can only hear television - the visuals go over my head - so my wish to be on Stars in Their Eyes all those years ago was based on the mistaken belief that it was just about the singing... and a heart-warming back story, of course. It hadn't even occurred to me that I might have to dance.

There are people with severe vision loss who love to dance. Some do it professionally but in general, even if the person who can't see knows every step by heart, fluidity and flair are best learned by sight.
Many singers with low vision tend to stand still on stage but, without eye contact, connecting with their audience during a performance is tricky. In fact, Begley says that one reason she applied for The Voice was to improve her stage presence, which has been criticised by talent contest judges in the past.
"If you can't see, you can't bounce around the stage and whip the crowd up or interact visually with any of the coaches or the people around you," she says.
Her TV coach Danny O'Donoghue has been very supportive and has taught her simple arm movements.

The finalists line up with Holly Willoughby and Reggie Yates

When learning a routine, she has to be directed by touch. She explains that O'Donoghue has had to manoeuvre her shoulders and arms, physically guiding her through the moves he wants her to do.