ROBERT WHITE was only 20 when he lost his sight. The architecture student thought his life was over.

"Your sight means so much to be an architect and to lose your sight ..." His voice trails away.

He was in the third year of his Strathclyde University course and was close to throwing in the towel.

But Robert beat all the odds to take a first class degree and is now working toward his PhD.

It wasn't easy. He had to take two years to complete his third year and another two years to complete his fourth.

He may never design the buildings he once dreamed of but a different career path has opened up... as an access consultant, using his skills as an architect to ensure the needs of the visually-impaired are taken into account when new buildings or developments are in the pipeline.

Robert, now 26, suffers from the genetic, degenerative disease, Lebers, which affects the optic nerve resulting in loss of central vision.

He has some peripheral vision but sees nothing at all in front of him.

His older brother, Douglas, now a GP in New Zealand, was diagnosed with Lebers at the age of three, but there was no sign that Robert was similarly affected.

Robert was never tested and it never occurred to him there might be a problem.

And then it came out of the blue. Almost overnight. A fuzziness in the centre of his left eye, spreading to the right eye.

"I wasn't worried. I thought they'd caught it early and could do something to stop it. But they couldn't."

He turned in on himself. "When this first happened to me, I was very agoraphobic. I stayed in all the time. I was too afraid even to leave the house to put the bins out. It was almost like a part of me was dying."

There is no bitterness, but there is a wistfulness for the life he was leading when he started university. His independence went overnight.

"You've finally got freedom and it's, wow.... I was just really loving my life as an independent adult and then I had to go back to being reliant on other people. It's very hard to come to terms with it."

He is particularly grateful to his parents. His father, a GP, moved to a practice in the city and they sold up the family home in Stranraer.

"My parents gave up everything to move here to be at hand for me," he says.

"They live in the West End and I live at Glasgow Cross, so there's still a bit of distance, but I can't thank them enough."

Robert hands me a pair of simulation glasses and I see what he sees - a cloudy blur in the centre with some vision on the outside. I yank them off right away. It's awful.

To see anything at all, Robert has to look up and use the side part of his eye.

You would never know to look at Robert there's a problem because he looks you straight in the face like anyone else.

"I like to give people eye contact even if I can't see their faces," he nods.

"But it's horrible not to recognise friends and family. And it's strange to go on holiday somewhere and you could be in Blackpool or Barbados."

But Robert remains upbeat.

"If you have an impairment, it forces you to work harder. I get more tired more quickly than someone with full vision because if you think of it, you can't see so you have to use so much mental energy. You're constantly processing things and running on overdrive. It is a full-time job being visually impaired."

Visibility, the Glasgow charity working with people affected by visual impairment, has taught him strategies to cope with his sight loss.

He wouldn't have as much independence without them.

"I can't turn back the clock now. There are two ways to approach this. You can either be very sorry for yourself and think Oh, I'm so tragic, help me' or you want to be independent."

And it was through Visibility that he met one of his staunchest supporters, Colette Vassie, Colette, 37, of Clarkston, has as anaridia, a hereditary condition which her son, Ciaran, who is also profoundly autistic, has inherited.

"Robert and I would have long conversations on the phone and he'd get quite down and ask why me?' "It was totally devastating for him. But he did have the determination and I kept saying to him don't give up.

"I am very proud of him and what he has achieved."

Robert has nothing but praise for the university. "They've been great. They've provided sighted assistants and equipment as well as a larger keyboard and specialist softwear.

Maybe some day stem cell research will give him his sight back.

"I understand why people would be against it, but it's my only chance and I'm hoping that one day it will happen."

Meantime, if he wants to see again, he goes to bed.

"I can't see during the daytime, but I still dream in full vision so my favourite time of the day is when I go to sleep. It seems silly but it's just lovely, just curling up in bed and being in a world with vision again.

"And I still wake up every morning, open my eyes and there is that sense of disappointment." Visibility, 2 Queens Crescent, Glasgow. 0141 332 4632, www.visibility.org.uk