Blind Comedians: Chris McCausland and 7 More on Stage

By Carlos Acosta · October 31, 2026 · 11 min read

Chris McCausland, an English stand-up who in 2024 became the first blind contestant to win Strictly Come Dancing, is the blind comedian most people search for. He is one of several blind and partially sighted comedians working in stand-up, on TV panel shows and on radio, including Jamie MacDonald, Tom Skelton, Jake Donaldson, Neil Skene and Tafsila Khan in the UK, Matt Stein in the US and Jennifer Wong in Australia.

Below: what each says about their sight, in their own words, and how they perform without seeing the room. Pages were checked on October 31, 2026. For blind people in music, science and sport, see famous blind people.

Key points

Chris McCausland is blind. He lost his sight to retinitis pigmentosa in his 20s, BBC News reports (BBC News). What is left looks like "blurry light," which he now thinks his brain makes up.
He won Strictly Come Dancing in December 2024 with Dianne Buswell, as the show's first blind contestant (BBC News).
The UK has a small circuit of blind comics. RNIB, the UK sight loss charity, has profiled several of them.
In the US and Australia: Matt Stein performs as "Blind Stein" in Illinois, and Jennifer Wong toured Jennifer Wong Has No Peripheral Vision in 2023.
Sound does the work of sight. Laughter is the feedback, and they learn where the stage ends. None mentions braille in the interviews we read.

Comedian	From	Known for
Chris McCausland	Liverpool, England	Stand-up since 2003; Strictly Come Dancing winner (2024)
Jamie MacDonald	Glasgow, Scotland	Radio 4's Life on the Blink (recommissioned 2022); Fringe shows since 2013
Tom Skelton	Milton Keynes, England	Perth Fringe World Weekly Comedy Award (2020)
Jake Donaldson	Newcastle, England	Spectacle, his Fringe show about sight loss (2024)
Neil Skene	Scotland	The Belligerency of Blindness, Glasgow (2024)
Tafsila Khan	Wales	RNIB's See the Funny Side course (2018)
Matt Stein	Peoria, Illinois, US	"Blind Stein," stand-up since 2012
Jennifer Wong	Australia	Jennifer Wong Has No Peripheral Vision (2023)

Each row is sourced in the sections below.

Chris McCausland

Country: England. He grew up in Liverpool and has done stand-up since 2003 (BBC News, Channel 4). He studied software engineering, and his eyesight was "starting to get very bad at uni," he told the i paper in 2023 (The i Paper).

He is blind, and he says even the light he thought he saw may not be real. For Channel 4's Scared of the Dark (2023), he spent eight days in pitch black. He told Radio Times that because he lost his sight gradually, "it's all just blurry light." In the bunker he still saw the same blurry light, and concluded: "God I think my brain has been playing tricks on me forever" (Radio Times).

On a cure, he told the i paper that a chip giving back 10 per cent of his sight wouldn't tempt him: "I'd just think, what's the point?" A miracle that cured him completely? "Yeah, I'd consider that" (The i Paper). How other blind people describe what they see is in what do blind people see.

Retinitis pigmentosa. BBC News calls it "a genetic condition" (BBC News, 2022). "My grandmother had it, and my mum," he told the i paper. The loss was slow enough that he barely noticed it: "I'd been going blind very slowly since I was born."

When. Accounts differ. The i paper wrote in 2023 that he lost his sight completely by the age of 22. BBC News wrote in December 2024 that he was registered blind after "gradually losing his sight to retinitis pigmentosa in his 20s and 30s" (BBC News).

What retinitis pigmentosa is. The US National Eye Institute describes it as "a group of rare eye diseases that affect the retina." It says most people with it "eventually lose most of their sight" (National Eye Institute).

His stand-up and TV work, year by year

2003: first stand-up, a hobby away from a call centre job he called "soul destroying" (BBC News).
2021: Live at the Apollo (one of three appearances) and his debut at the Royal Variety Performance (Channel 4).
2022: the Speaky Blinder tour. The Guardian's review found his blindness "low in the mix" for two-thirds of the show, before the later stages zero in on how it affects his family life (The Guardian). Channel 4 listed his panel shows that year: The Last Leg, Have I Got News for You, Would I Lie to You?, 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown, QI and Blankety Blank. On radio: "I do the News Quiz on Radio Four" (BBC News).
2023: Channel 4's Scared of the Dark and his own travel series, The Wonders of the World I Can't See. In it, a celebrity guest gives him a humorous "audio description" of each landmark (Channel 4, The i Paper). More on the real thing in audio description.
2024: Strictly Come Dancing on BBC One. He was the show's first blind contestant (BBC News). He won the final in December with Dianne Buswell. Their Instant Karma routine used a "blackout moment" meant to imitate his experience of blindness (BBC News).
2024: Channel 4's alternative Christmas message, an appeal for an end to discrimination against disabled people (The Guardian).
2025: his Strictly waltz with Buswell to You'll Never Walk Alone won the memorable moment award at the BAFTA TV Awards (The Guardian). In October he talked about his new autobiography, Keep Laughing, on BBC One (BBC News).

Jamie MacDonald

Country: Scotland, originally from Glasgow. Known for: his first Edinburgh Fringe show, That Funny Blind Guy, in 2013 (University of Aberdeen); his Radio 4 series Life on the Blink, recommissioned in 2022; and his BBC Two documentary Blind Ambition, which earned him a Grierson Awards nomination that year (RNIB).

His sight, in his words. He began losing it in his teens to a degenerative eye condition. "I have very low vision now and use a stick," he told RNIB in 2022. While studying law in Aberdeen, he "finally had to admit I couldn't see properly and needed help," and started using a white cane (Sight Scotland).

He started at open mic nights while working at a bank in London. "Comedy allowed me to reclaim my identity," he told Sight Scotland in 2024.

Tom Skelton

Country: England, originally from Milton Keynes. Known for: winning the Perth Fringe World Weekly Comedy Award in Australia in 2020, and his own show at the 2022 Edinburgh Fringe. He also works as a campaigns officer at RNIB (RNIB).

His sight, in his words. He was a student doing comedy in Oxford, London and Edinburgh when he lost it. He was diagnosed at the end of 2009, and the loss was fast, "which left me with five per cent vision at the beginning of 2010." He doesn't use a guide dog or a cane, and can "even appear able to make eye contact," which confuses some bookers. Comedy helped him cope: it was "the only thing I could still do as well as before my sight loss."

Jake Donaldson

Country: England, from Newcastle upon Tyne. Known for: his 2022 show Neurotica and Spectacle (2024), an Edinburgh Fringe show about his sight loss that uses light and sound. He has written and performed comedy since he was a teenager (RNIB).

His sight, in his words. "My eyesight is something that I've had to deal with my whole life," he told RNIB in 2024. He is partially sighted and gets around venues "with the sight I do have and my guide cane." People sometimes ask him: "You're not actually blind though, are you?" He also notes it's rare for two visually impaired comics to share a bill, because bookers "assume we'll all be similar."

Neil Skene

Country: Scotland. Known for: his first solo show, The Belligerency of Blindness, at Glasgow's International Comedy Festival in March 2024. RNIB introduced him as a blind comedian (RNIB). In 2023, RNIB also quoted him in its preview of Cabaret in the Dark, a show in pitch dark that Visually Impaired Creators Scotland took to the Edinburgh Fringe (RNIB).

In his words. "For me, performing without sight can be an advantage," he says. His advice to anyone new to sight loss: "You really are still you, just with less vision!"

Tafsila Khan

Country: Wales, where she is a campaigner for RNIB Cymru. Known for: her stand-up debut in June 2018, in front of 50 people, at the end of RNIB's See the Funny Side, a two-day stand-up course for blind and partially sighted people. Her set, coached by the comedian Georgie Morrell, was about sight loss and motherhood (RNIB).

In her words. RNIB says she has been blind since birth. She has always used humor to "make other people comfortable with my sight loss," she said in 2020, and the stage felt natural: "It felt so right to be on stage making people laugh."

Matt Stein

Country: United States, from Peoria, Illinois. Known for: his act "Blind Stein." He started stand-up in 2012, and in November 2023 he sold out a show in Peoria Heights. He performs in about 17 states, he told WCBU, Peoria's public radio station, in 2023 (WCBU).

His sight, in his words. He was born with retinitis pigmentosa, WCBU reports. "I was always legally blind at night as a kid," he says; then tunnel vision, and his sight "closed off right around my early 30s." Today, "it's just colored spiraling Slinkys and flashing booms of light all the time." On stage he mentions it, but he tries "not to get too hacky and into the niche."

Jennifer Wong

Country: Australia. Known for: her stand-up show Jennifer Wong Has No Peripheral Vision, which played the Melbourne International Comedy Festival and toured Australia in 2023 (Vision Australia). Vision Australia, a blindness and low vision charity, says she lives with retinitis pigmentosa.

In her words. Her jokes about it, quoted by Region Canberra in 2023: retinitis pigmentosa is Latin for "please don't drive," and when she first saw halos around lights, she thought, "I'm no expert, but they can't all be angels" (Region Canberra).

Laughter is the feedback. "I can get audio cues like laughter," Jamie MacDonald told RNIB. And bright stage lights mean sighted acts "can't see much past the first couple of rows, anyway." For Tom Skelton, laughter is "the main reaction you are always aiming for." Silent smilers "can certainly trigger a great deal of performance anxiety" (RNIB).

Not reading the room. Neil Skene turns that into focus: "I really focus on the material and don't try to pre-read the audience." For Tafsila Khan, not seeing the crowd means she doesn't "feel as daunted." Crowd work is harder. Richard Wheatley, a London comic RNIB profiled in 2022, says that "Not being able to spot interesting people in an audience" makes it a challenge.

Scripts and structure. "Some comedians like to ad-lib but I'm more structured," says Jamie MacDonald (University of Aberdeen). His advice to new comics: "make sure you write a script" (Sight Scotland).

Moving on stage. Tom Skelton has to "know where the edge of the stage is and walk it a few times." Help can overshoot: Richard Wheatley has had comperes "grabbing my arm to help me on or off stage."

Keeping time. Clubs show a light when a comic's time is up. Matt Stein couldn't see it, so "I had to learn how to start a mental clock" (WCBU).

On TV panel shows. Panel shows lean on pictures and props. The production teams "meet me halfway," Chris McCausland says, for example by changing a round to an audio round. His teammates know the rule: "If there's something you want to tell me, describe it." To Alan Davies on QI, he said: "not everything has to be for me" (BBC News).

How much to joke about blindness. When he started, McCausland mentioned it once and moved on: "I wanted them to forget that I was blind." By his 2022 tour, he talked about it "more than ever," BBC News reported. Tom Skelton made the same change: he used to avoid it, and now explains his sight at the start of each show. Jamie MacDonald says audiences most enjoy "my take on life as a blind person."

Braille. None of these interviews mentions braille, so we don't claim it. For humor about blindness on YouTube rather than on stage, see Tommy Edison. For blind characters on screen, see blind characters.

Where Braillito fits

Braillito, our app, teaches braille. It teaches the braille cells in lessons with exercises you play, with lives, levels and a daily streak: 59 lessons in 8 worlds in English. It also has a translator, a dictionary and a cell builder. The English lessons are uncontracted braille (grade 1); they don't teach contracted braille or transcription, and Braillito isn't a braille transcriber.

Nothing here means any of these comedians uses or endorses Braillito. None of them talks about braille in the interviews we read; if watching them made you curious about how blind people read, the six-dot cell is where braille starts. The translator on braillito.com shows how a word or short phrase looks in UEB, but it only applies the rules a program can apply, so it doesn't replace a transcriber. Without paying, the braille translator works in any browser.

Braillito is a subscription with no free version; depending on the plan, it starts with a free trial or a discounted first period, if it's your first subscription (is Braillito free?). Get Braillito.

Frequently asked questions

He is registered blind. He sees "blurry light," but after eight days in total darkness on Channel 4's Scared of the Dark (2023), he decided his brain had been "playing tricks" on him (Radio Times).

Retinitis pigmentosa, which BBC News calls a genetic condition; his grandmother and mother had it too, he told the i paper. He lost his sight gradually: by 22, according to the i paper (2023), or in his 20s and 30s, according to BBC News (2024).

Yes. Matt Stein of Peoria, Illinois, has performed as "Blind Stein" since 2012 and says he plays about 17 states (WCBU). Most of the interviews we found were from the UK.