Farhat Katrenov was born in Karaganda, but his memories of home are not tied to that city. His story truly begins in Astana, where his parents moved when he was still a baby. This new capital, growing with ambition and concrete dreams, would shape his life in ways no one could foresee. He remembers childhood as ordinary and cheerful, a house full of warmth, laughter, and a future still unwritten. He wore glasses early, but no one ever imagined that eyesight, this most delicate window to the world, would one day slowly fade into darkness. He speaks of his early youth with a smile tinged by the hindsight of loss: “It was gradual… my vision just slowly slipped away.” Around 2003, doctors diagnosed him with a retinal disease. He and his family tried everything, treatments, surgeries in Almaty and abroad. But the slow erosion continued. “Retinal diseases are insidious,” he says quietly, “they destroy vision gradually… sometimes almost completely.”
Losing vision in one’s twenties is a rupture, one day you walk freely, the next the world becomes something that must be deciphered through other people’s voices, the tapping of a cane, the sweep of memory. He was officially classified as having first-degree visual disability. And suddenly, society’s boundaries pressed in, expectations of what he should be capable of shrank overnight, even though his mind, his dreams, his ambitions remained intact. For a few years, life stood still. Days stretched into one another. “You start thinking: what next? Will I even be able to do anything?” The apartment became a kind of quiet prison, not by walls but by doubt. He tried seeking employment, but whenever employers learned about his visual impairment, rejection came instantly: “Nobody wants to hire you, even if you can do basic tasks.” He looked around and saw that for people who lost sight, opportunities were vanishingly few. But something deep inside, the heart that refuses to surrender, the mind that keeps searching, the will that insists on movement, was already stirring.
He discovered his first true tool of independence not in a rehabilitation center, but in technology. “Smartphones,” he says, smiling again. In 2014, he bought a phone with his sister, and inside it he found, almost like a hidden message, accessibility features designed for blind users. He began to experiment: how to navigate, how to send messages, how to explore the internet without sight. It became his refuge, his bridge back to the world. He joined chats with visually impaired friends from Qazaqstan and Russia. They exchanged tips, solved each other’s problems, learned together. “I could register anywhere, communicate, learn new things. It was like discovering the world anew.” Technology gave him not just access, but dignity, a taste of autonomy that had almost slipped from his grasp. That digital path led to something even greater, love. He met his future wife online. What began as shared curiosity and communication grew into a partnership of care, respect, and mutual strength. He likes to call her “my right hand.” She walks beside him with unwavering devotion: guiding him on the street, decoding documents, completing the bureaucracy that stands like a fortress before social initiatives. “In everything, she supports me.” That partnership sparked a new possibility: what if he could do for others what technology did for him?
He began working at the Blind Society (Kirov Organization), teaching others to use smartphones and computers. He saw fear dissolve into joy when someone learned to send a message again or make a phone call without help. He realized that blindness does not erase ability, only access. This understanding ignited a mission. In 2017, he and his wife founded the public association TifloSmart Society for People with Disabilities. The name reflects their core belief: smart technologies for blind users can unlock independence and confidence. “We wanted visually impaired people, upon hearing the name, to immediately understand, this is a place where they can master modern tools.” Through government social contracts in 2018–2019, TifloSmart began training people who had lost vision, teaching them to use smartphones, join video conferences, access social networks, manage their lives again without sighted assistance. Many were afraid to even hold a touchscreen phone; he remembers guiding them finger by finger: “Where to tap, how to swipe.”
He never received formal mentorship, “no one trained me,” he says, but that selftaught journey became the foundation of his teaching. His ability was earned through perseverance. As Abai would say, aqyl (mind) grew through curiosity, qairat (will) through persistence, and jurek (heart) through responsibility to others. He expanded his skills further. He became a certified massage therapist. He is now completing higher education in Physical Culture and Sports, preparing to combine rehabilitation work with social entrepreneurship. At School No. 10 he taught orientation and mobility: “People who lose their sight need to be able to move independently, indoors, outdoors, everywhere… to feel more confident.” His tone when speaking about empowerment is calm but firm: “If doors don’t open, you need to find your own path.” This is not arrogance, it is survival wisdom learned from being underestimated. His organization has continued evolving. Today, TifloSmart supports adults with various disabilities, not only blindness. The goal: create a space where they can receive therapy, find community, regain confidence, and work.
Recently, they were allocated a new office, 80 square meters. But it came as an empty concrete shell. “We had to start everything from scratch,” he says. Renovations became a new kind of endurance test: buying materials, dealing with unreliable workers. “There were moments when I wanted to give up.” But he didn’t. Soon, the center will have a massage room, activity areas, and, importantly, a psychologist’s office. “People come not only for therapy, but to talk. To feel they are understood.” He dreams of creating additional workplaces for people with disabilities, spaces where their skills are valued and their dignity preserved. He remembers a past enterprise where visually impaired workers made baskets by hand: “It suits blind people, they need labor rehabilitation and social interaction.” Work is not only income, but healing.
And yet, the world outside those walls remains uneven. Accessibility is still selective, inconsistent. One example frustrates him deeply: although their new office has an interior ramp, the building itself does not, “People in wheelchairs can’t even reach the entrance.” Their letters to authorities receive polite redirections, but no action. Snow is left uncleared for weeks unless someone complains. “Sometimes things are forgotten,” he says simply. He never dramatizes, but reality speaks for itself. The support ecosystem for entrepreneurs with disabilities, he says, exists “in name.” Programs and grants are there, but often poorly explained. “People don’t understand where to apply, how it works.” He shares his knowledge so others don’t remain lost in confusion, but wishes that society would meet citizens with disabilities halfway, with information that is clear, accessible, human.
He does not claim to have faced discrimination. “It’s not bad will, just lack of awareness.” A gentle, generous interpretation. Yet his observations reveal the deeper truth: “People are still afraid to hire people with disabilities.” Qazaqstan is improving, yes, but slowly. “Abroad, workplaces are created specifically for them. Here, very few exist.” What he loves most in his work is connection: when an older person comes with confusion and leaves with hope. “It gives a special sense of fulfillment to be useful.” What exhausts him is the emotional load of constant requests: “Even at eight or nine in the evening, people call. And you are human too, you want to rest.” Still, he responds, because he knows the feeling of being alone in the dark.
Nature restores him. In summer, he and his family escape the city: “Traffic, routine… sometimes it becomes too much. You go somewhere quiet, and you can breathe again.” He has many friends, across Qazaqstan, people he met after he lost his sight. They share not just experiences but resilience. Friendship is another form of mobility; connection makes distances feel shorter. His advice to others is simple and strong: “Don’t give up. Take everything into your own hands. The main thing is to start, even small.” This belief is his compass. “Not everything will succeed immediately,” he says with a half-smile. “But if there is a goal and desire to move forward, everything will definitely work out.” When asked what he would change in his past, he pauses thoughtfully: “I think I would go the same way. I am not the type to just sit at home.” Adversity did not choose him to break him, but to reveal what he could build.
What is success? “It’s when you are needed. When your work benefits others.” With quiet pride, he adds: “I have a family, a daughter, a wife. I have a beloved job. In my own world, I am truly successful.” His motto: “If it doesn’t work out … you still have to keep trying until it does.” Not inspiration, instruction. Not just for him, but for everyone who believes disability ends possibility. Sometimes he wonders if losing sight had a purpose: “Maybe it was necessary, to show others that not all is lost. Disability is not the end of life. It doesn’t mean you’re not needed.” He dreams of expanding TifloSmart, more offices, more workplaces, more impact. But he doesn’t rush, “Rome wasn’t built in a day.” For now, he focuses on building community, one person at a time.
Farhat’s story is one of reclaiming agency, taking life into your own hands even when society tries to place it out of reach. His journey reflects Abai’s moral triad: aqyl (mind) in his continuous learning and innovation, jurek (heart) in his compassion and service, and qairat (will) in his refusal to surrender to despair. He embodies resilience not as loud heroism, but as quiet persistence: the courage to keep moving, step by careful step, toward a future he cannot see with his eyes, but perceives clearly with his heart. His life reminds us that blindness is not the absence of vision. Sometimes, it is the beginning of seeing differently, more deeply, more humanly. Through his work, Farhat ensures that others who find themselves in darkness discover the tools, the support, and the belief to rise again. And as he said, success is being needed, and in Qazaqstan today, his presence, his guidance, his unwavering optimism are needed more than he realizes.