Nas Campanella was the first blind newsreader, in the whole world.

Suffering a rare medical abnormality when she was six months old, Nas would continue to have surgeries to try and restore her sight until she was in her mid-teens.

At school, Nas struggled to learn braille, which at that time, was the mainstream way for a blind person to participate in formal education. At 10 years old, Nas was really falling behind. Her parents took her to a neurological specialist who diagnosed Nas with Charcot-Marie-Tooth syndrome: a degenerative nerve disease which impacts sensitivity, muscle tone, balance and stability, and meant that Nas wasn’t able to read Braille.

Finding new ways to learn, which included a lot of audio books, Nas fell in love with learning and would finish top of her class in year 12. Nas studied Communications at the University of Technology Sydney and began a cadetship with the ABC in 2011. In 2013, Nas became a newsreader on Triple J, and in 2020 Nas pitched to the ABC the need for a Disability Affairs Reporter, in light of the 2019 Disability Royal Commission. A few weeks later, the ABC offered the role to Nas herself.