Breaking Down the Barriers

Michael Taggart

Michael Taggart

Born with low vision I got by with minimal adaptations until my vision deteriorated in my late 20s. I then learned how to get around with a long white cane and use Braille and, in time, PC screen readers.

In 2007 the unemployment rate was 63% for people with vision impairment or who are blind and 34% for those with postgraduate qualifications (Vision Australia 2007). It is tempting to restrict this story to having a job for 21 of the last 22 years but that would leave out the most important part of my life.

As someone with low vision, I had been unable to gain work other than as a cleaner after I graduated from university in the mid 70s when my fully sighted colleagues were quickly snapped up. In 1981, I began a Master of Arts until I could no longer read print by 1982.

From the late 1980s employment was made more accessible by PC screen reader technology and Commonwealth government support. In 1990, at age 38, I won my first full time job after becoming totally blind in the mid-1980s.

Since starting work at Salisbury City Council in 1997, part- and later full-time as Access Officer, management has given me many career development opportunities and accommodated my appointment to the SA government’s Ministerial Disability Advisory Council (2007-12).

I could have continued in my Master of Arts degree if my wife Cathy had become my volunteer reader and admin support. We put our energy into parenting instead.

I was told by a social worker in the early 1980s that I had been irresponsible starting a family as this would condemn the children to live in poverty. Given the lack of adaptive technology then and the unemployment rate even today this was a statement of probability. But this also reinforced society’s low expectations of a blind person. Our two children did grow up in poverty until 1990. But my wife Cathy made sure that Joel and Lucilla were not impoverished in other ways: ensuring they had a sense of their own worth and had some power to influence family activities and decisions.

She had to learn about being married to, and parenting with, a blind person. She also mentored me as a parent. Yet these adaptations made by a spouse are not recognised nor supported by any Government.

After my initial fear of being solely responsible for a 15 month old, I learned how much very young children can initiate play and include a blind parent in their everyday activities. I shared some housework and over time became our son’s companion on his many journeys on buses and trains. In 2007 he was appointed SA Youth Ambassador for Road Safety.

While I spent evenings and weekends with Joel, our daughter Lucilla had her mum to herself and learned exponentially. She was Dux of her high school and decided to study Dietetics after initially starting in Medicine. During her uni years she was made the National YMCA Young volunteer of the Year.

Cathy and I now live in our mid northern suburb house with our daughter Lucilla, an Accredited Practising Dietitian. Our son Joel and his partner Megan live in the house they built in the Adelaide Hills where he is Senior Statutory Planner in local government. Cathy volunteers in a number of crèches, increases her fluency in the international language Esperanto and we remain active in our spiritual home, the Edmund Rice Network.

Michael is a Disability Community Leader for International Day of People with Disability