Jason Kehl lives in Toowoomba Queensland Australia. He has won numerous awards for community service and dedication. Jason lived on a rural farm growing up and moved to Toowoomba with his family to attend school. Jason currently works at the Criminal Investigation Bureau in Toowoomba as a computer specialist. He was a voluntary columnist in the local newspaper for nine years from 1999-2008. His column titled “through my eyes” told the stories of people with disabilities and their families from around the Toowoomba region.

Jason has been legally blind since birth. He has a sight impairment that causes him to see the world as if it is a pendulum swinging backwards and forwards. In this interview, Jason talks about his experiences of education and in finding work. He also talks about his experiences as a newspaper columnist and some of the insights he has gained about disability in the community from the people he has written about. Jason chose to begin this story at the point where he left the family farm and moved to Toowoomba.

 

Jason:                      My dad used to own a property four hours west of Toowoomba, 12,000 acres and we used to sort of help him out and that but when school came around I actually had to, the choice was made either Toowoomba or Rockhampton was the best.

 

Facilitator:                Toowoomba?

Jason:                      Toowoomba, yeah. And yeah like I’ve had my visions since I was born. If you imagine a pendulum swinging backwards and forwards that’s how my vision keeps going.

Facilitator:                Right, so it’s like a strobe light? Or what you see swings from here to there?

Jason:                      No, no, no. I don’t notice it. It just happens. I couldn’t tell you. Someone told me that but my eye just does it automatically.

Facilitator:                Right.

Jason:                      And I can look at someone straight on, and I know this too because I did an interview once where, and my eyes would be going over your right shoulder.

Facilitator:                Right.

Jason:                      And people would, well this interview guy said well it’s a bit disconcerting for someone in an interview because they’d be thinking you’re trying to read the books behind them or whatever.

                                 Because I’ve got two sisters, one either side of me I think mum and dad just treated me like anyone, like a normal kid. Like there were no special allowances. I suppose that’s where I get that thing, well you just do it. If you think you can do it, give it a go.

Facilitator:                So not even on the farm when you were a kid, is there anything that they decided you shouldn’t be doing?

Jason:                      No, see when I was kid I didn’t really have that much to do with the farm. I was in the cattle yards and that with dad but I was too young to really do much.

Facilitator:                So just like any other kid, just playing around on the edge of it?

Jason:                      Yeah, but sort of, we used to go to our grandparents and ride horses because dad used to go up there.

Facilitator:                Riding horses?

Jason:                      Yeah, I won’t tell you the scary, scary stories but. I remember going on one ride at my auntie’s place just down in Minden and the horse knew, like I wanted to go, there was a drop and the horse knew that it wasn’t going any further. I was wondering why it wasn’t going anywhere but it knew because there’d be more damage to it than me.

Yeah, you get in and you do it. I suppose when I went to school for the first sort of three years of school I was in a special education unit here in Toowoomba and we learnt a little bit of Braille, a little bit of cooking and that sort of thing. I don’t use Braille now.

Facilitator:                You don’t?

Jason:                      No. I’ve got glasses that I can read print and I can use a little binocular thing for distance, for watching TV and crossing, when I come to an intersection. Anyhow, in Year 4 or 5 we actually got integrated into mainstream school and that was good too because it was just, and actually I think it was PE or something like that we got involved in and it was just like just one of the crowd, just do what everyone else is doing. And then I suppose when I went to high school we always, same thing. We had a teacher that could teach spare lesson and we’d have a spare lesson, that was for us to sort of catch up on different subjects or assignment or study for exams and that. And he would also sort of blow things up so I could read it and that sort of thing. I think towards the end I had, I used to sit next to a guy for most classes and he would read stuff off the board for me. And then I’d write it while he was reading it.

Facilitator:                So the teachers were making conversation so you could learn effectively and so were some of your classmates. They were helping you out.

Jason:                      Yeah, well this particular teacher he was sort of set aside, you know. There were four of us with different vision impairments going to the school. But that was in Year 8 but Year 9 and 10 I decided I’d take on the full seven subjects at the time and I thought oh well, can’t hurt. Just see how we go but then in Year 11, senior, I did a spare lesson. But then I had work with the Criminal Investigation Branch (CIB) and stuff. I was sort of an average student and that.

When I left school I wanted to be a vet or in horticulture, plants and stuff, but I did have work with an orchid nursery and was able to help there, mainly just potting the plants and fertilising and that sort of stuff.  I actually did some mowing too for a while but that was a bit difficult because I could never see, if the grass was real short I could never see the clear lines where I’d been.

I suppose I realised in the end that horticulture wasn’t going to work because I couldn’t see, you know. I went for work and it was, to try to, between the, there might be different, there might be roses but there might be the same sort of colour pink so that was not good to me.

Yeah, I suppose when I went for a job and it didn’t sort of come out I thought no, I need to, so then I went into computers. Because I’ve been here with Personnel West since ’94 and they were the ones to help me get into the CIB.

                                 And like the lady who was running it at the time she did like a, was involved in Rotary and somehow ...I think was supposed to be there for four weeks or whatever. Eight weeks later I was still there. They were sort of happy because I was still learning the computer and that sort of thing and they offered me a traineeship.

Facilitator:                So you didn’t actually walk straight into the traineeship, how did you get into it?

Jason:                      Well see they were sort of, for that eight weeks that I was there just as, work experience type to do with this Rotary project, I think they were impressed with how I was going that they tried to find a way to keep me, like give me a chance to show more. I suppose it was just proving that I could do what they were asking me to do and I suppose they could see, I suppose they were just happy with what I was doing. And it was a 12 month traineeship and it was in admin work and that sort of thing so it was, I don’t know, I didn’t sort of, I suppose I didn’t go looking. I sort of showed what I could do, was given the opportunity to show what I could do and they were sort of happy with what I was doing so they sort of gave me that opportunity.

                                 Then I did some study again following the traineeship finishing.

Facilitator:                What did you study?

Jason:                      Advanced diploma in marketing.

Facilitator:                So a complete shift from agriculture, through CIB to marketing.

Jason:                      And I was sort of at the end of that and thinking well where do I go from here and, yeah, Personnel West rang up in early ’94, not ’94, ’99 and they’d taken up some names of clients I think to see if there were any positions there and then from there it’s like, I suppose my name was picked out I suppose because I was doing the study but I'm not real sure why it was.

Facilitator:                So your name was picked out for what exactly?

Jason:                      I think it was to do the column.

Facilitator:                Oh right, so this is where your journalism started? You were asked to start writing a column for the newspaper?

Jason:                      Yeah, I think that’s, like I met the editor at the time and he was sort of quite, I don’t know, we just, because I’d never done any writing or anything like that before but he just gave me a couple of tips and basically he said I want 12 or 14 or something stories. Like before we publish anything I want that many so that I can still be learning and it will appear in the paper sort of thing.

Facilitator:                So he could still put you in the paper at the same time as you were practising on the side.

Facilitator:                What was the column about?

Jason:                      The column’s called Through My Eyes and it was all about just raising the awareness of disability, giving those with a disability a voice. 

I always sort of give this example of when I was in primary school we used to have an orientation mobility instructor who would just help you learn techniques to cross the road properly without being squashed and one day I asked him, what do I have to do to get your job? He said university. I thought nope, not university. It didn’t impress me then, it still doesn’t really. I'm not really into uni.

Facilitator:                That’s okay.

Jason:                      But then it was years later when I learnt the computer course at Skillshare. It was like a TAFE but different, shorter courses, and I learnt this computer program Semtext, like it magnifies things for me and that and I had to learn that and one of the lecturers there said well have you ever thought about writing a magazine article? And I thought no. And I didn’t really do anything about it because it never really crossed my mind.

                                 But writing the column was a combination of those two things. It was like I was writing and from primary school I was giving a voice, like I said, just giving a voice through the written word and just giving the community awareness to say well people with disabilities don’t just sit at home in four walls, they’re in the community. They have work, they are on different committees and they ...

Facilitator:                So were you taking other people’s lives and telling their stories?

Jason:                      Yeah, I had to go and interview people and that’s where the CIB sort of came in handy was when I, because I used to use little micro cassettes and used to record the interview and then take it home and put it on the computer and just play around and find the bit that would best get the readers interested and that.

                                 It wasn’t just disability though; it was also what was going on in the broader community. Just to let people know that hey, well, if you’re interested in coming to a forum or a meeting somewhere, these are the people to contact. I didn’t, well I tried to actually put how it would affect, look at the issue rather than just say here’s a forum, whatever, what is it having, how would it affect people.

Facilitator:                Can you give an example? So say a forum comes to town and ...

Jason:                      I did a lot to do with, last year I did a lot with depression. There’s a depression support network.

Facilitator:                Great.

Jason:                      And what I would do there was, I’d sort of come to a couple of their meetings and just get a feel for what the group was about and they would let me know if there was a forum type thing. If there was speaker there that, high profile or, yeah, sometimes I would take that angle as to even these people have had depression. Come and hear their story and that sort of thing. Just sort of adding that human touch to it.

Facilitator:                So every week you have a column in the paper?

Jason:                      Since 29 August ’99, a weekly column.

Facilitator:                Until when?

Jason:                      First of November last year.

Facilitator:                That’s nine years.

Jason:                      Yeah, and it was, I think what kept me going was to, everyone’s got a different, everyone’s got a story to tell.

                                 I remember about six months after I started I did an interview with a lady, her son had a disability, I think it was Downs Syndrome, I'm not sure and she asked me “well what are you coming to talk to me for?”. I suppose because no one had probably done that. And I just said “well to tell your story”. I can’t remember the exact words but that’s what it was about, to tell their story and give people in the community an insight into well this is how this person dealt with say having a child with a disability, you know?

Facilitator:                Was that a common response for people that you talked to, that they were amazed that somebody might want to know what their life is like?

Jason:                      That was the only one that really, as I said, stands out, that actually asked that question. Probably a lot of people thought it but they never asked it. I don’t know what it is to be in a wheelchair but I do know what it is to have a disability so I suppose it was, I suppose in some ways they felt comfortable that they could ...Talk to me.

Facilitator:                And what did they want to say? Was there anything that stands out, over nine years of talking to people with disabilities, about what they want the world to know about their lives? 

Jason:                      I don’t know. I suppose it’s just the awareness, like there’s a story I did, there’s a guy, I spoke to his mother and this kid had, I can’t remember the name of it but it was a rare skin disorder… this was where the skin, I think if it dried out he would just be like a snake. You know how snakes shed their skin. I just can’t think of the name of it… when she [the boy’s mother] walked down the aisle of say the grocery shop people would sort of say comments…

Facilitator:                Whisper behind their hands?

Jason:                      Yeah, because the boy’s skin used to be all red and it would be like a burn, like he’d been burnt on a stove or something. I think people would sort of have comments to say accusing the mother of child abuse…so I think she got a T-shirt made up saying something like “it’s not contagious or, you know”. I don’t know if it was that one but there was one that said “it’s you that has the disability, not the kid”. People just didn’t understand.

Facilitator:                So what she’s saying is she’s being accused of child abuse because she’s got a kid walking down the street looking like he’s been burnt on the stove.

Jason:                      And people stare.

Facilitator:                And she got fed up and made a T-shirt that said it’s not his problem, it’s yours.

Facilitator:                Do you think a lot of those sorts of reactions from people on the street are about fear or misunderstanding.

Jason:                      I think it’s just not really, it’s like anyone, if you don’t have anything to do with disability well you’re not going to worry about it are you?

Facilitator:                So you don’t think it’s about fear or misunderstanding, you just don’t think people care. Until they encounter it it doesn’t enter their head?

Jason:                      Yeah and I’ve heard a few stories where people have had nothing to do with disability but through an accident or whatever, it’s all the tables have turned. Now they have a disability and they’ll ...

Facilitator:                They’ve got a reason to think about it.

Jason:                      Yeah, and I often used to sort of think some of the stories I would put out there and people might not want, either read it or might see it but not take much notice and it might not be for six months, 12 months and I think I read something or something happens to them and they think well gee, I read something about that. It’s just the awareness.

Facilitator:                So you’re hoping that just having a column like that each week is just going to at least sneak under the surface of the apathy and complete indifference?

Jason:                      It’s going to broaden people’s horizons isn’t it?

Facilitator:                Yeah.

Jason:                      But I suppose there again if you don’t have involvement with disability there’s probably a fair chance that you wouldn’t have read it.

Facilitator:                Yeah.

Jason:                      Because you know, for me articles say on cars, that’s no good to me because I'm never going to have a car so I can just easy skip over that and read something else. And same with people, same with my column, they’re not interested so they just skip over it and just keep going.

Facilitator:                So you’re out there networking, you’re on boards of various disability groups?

Jason:                      Yeah.

Facilitator:                So you’ve chaired service boards have you? Is that right, Jason?

Jason:                      I was chair of an access committee here in Toowoomba to do with the council.

Facilitator:                What did that involve?

Jason:                      That was looking at improving, for safer streets, foothpaths, lights and that sort of thing. We used to meet every, I think every couple of months or so.

Facilitator:                Did things improve do you think as a result of all that?

Jason:                      I think it did but I think just in general it’s improved because people are in the community.

Jason:                      You know those little tiles that, they’re just down here, directional tiles for vision impairment.

Facilitator:                Actually, I didn’t notice.

Jason:                      They’ve sort of come along I suppose because people are out in the community and they need, someone say with a cane or something needs a guide as to know where they are. They’re only that wide.

Facilitator:                They’re raised up?

Jason:                      They’re raised up, yeah.

Facilitator:                So they’re the shape of an arrow or is there Braille on there?

Jason:                      When you come along with your feet you can actually feel, they’re raised enough that you can feel what’s there.

Facilitator:                So they’re a physical landmark.

Female:                    We’ve got them on our stairs here.

Jason:                      They’re different, some of them are in yellow. The ones down here are in a creamy colour sort of thing. And I think just general access to wheelchair, for wheelchair access. Now they’ve got, well taxi stops, there’s like ramps.

Female:                    Wheelchairs coming off kerbs are really, really common.

Jason:                      And buses, they’ve all improved that way, yeah.

Facilitator:                Really, the Toowoomba buses have improved?

Jason:                      As in for people with wheelchairs or even anyone with a pram ...

Facilitator:                Have they got the hydraulic lifts in the Toowoomba buses?

Jason:                      There’s only a couple that have got hydraulic lifts but now they’re all quite flat floor.

Facilitator:                Okay, so you just roll straight onto the bus? No stairs.

Jason:                      Like that’s a sort of improvement, big improvement because it’s not only catering for those with a disability, the whole community benefits.

Facilitator:                Or people who don’t think they’ve got a disability but might not be able to climb the stairs at some point. They’ve broken their ankle or something.

Jason:                      Yeah.

Female:                    Jason’s also been chairman of the board here at Personnel West.

Facilitator:                You were chairman of the board?

Jason:                      Yeah, I was here for ...

Female:                    How many years have you served on the board?

Jason:                      I looked it up on the board there before, it was ’04 but I thought it was earlier than that.

Facilitator:                So you’ve been on the Personnel West board for around five years?

Jason:                      Five years or, you know.

Facilitator:                Gosh, that’s a long time.

Jason:                      Little longer, yeah. I suppose for here it was my chance to sort of give back. Personnel West has given me two opportunities, one with the CIB and one with writing for the paper and here was my chance to sort of give back to an organisation.

Facilitator:                You were saying to me before that at the same time they wouldn’t have a circus [unclear] without the client.

Jason:                      I think that was the thing too, like it was, yeah, as I said to give my, to give back to an organisation who’d given me so much.

Facilitator:                You’ve had a fair amount of input then into the running of this place?

Jason:                      Yeah. I’m a bit of furniture around here.  Yeah, but that’s the passion I have, it always comes back to the clients are the reason that this place exists and without them there’s nothing.

Facilitator:                So you’re there to make sure that the issues are heard.

Jason:                      Yeah, and give them directions to clients and finding out if they want to talk to the staff or whatever about particular issues. But I don’t know, it was just, I suppose it sort of came naturally in a little way because I’d been on the other side. Like I know what it’s like to be a client and I guess things have changed to what they were when I was a client but still ...

Facilitator:                How have they changed? 

Jason:                      There seems to be block funding now, it’s all individual funding.

Facilitator:                Is that better, do you think?

Jason:                      I think in a lot of ways, yeah, but we used to have groups that would meet like probably weekly and might do interviews one week, how to do interviews, the techniques and that sort of thing and the next week we might do something on resumes but now I suppose it doesn’t happen.

Female:                    It’s more individually tailored, Jason.

Jason:                      Yeah, I suppose that was because block funding, you were there and learning the same sort of stuff whereas now people are just ...

Facilitator:                So they go in to learn these things on their own? Do they still have those little group, work group meetings and things?

Jason:                      Not that I know of.

Facilitator:                Not so much.

Jason:                      It’s more client by client, isn’t it?

Female:                    The support is far more personalised. It’s now one employment consultant with one client and so we work specifically in a very detailed ...

Facilitator:                So you just don’t meet other clients, they don’t meet each other anymore?

Female:                    Can do. We have functions, we have things like that but not the way it was back ...

Jason:                      Not on a weekly, fortnightly sort of thing where we’d talk about different ...

Facilitator:                Right, does that affect friendships for you?

Jason:                      How do you mean?

Facilitator:                Well, I don’t know. I was just sort of thinking if block funding, the move to individual funding has done is to take people away from the group sort of network.

Jason:                      I suppose ...

Facilitator:                I do have one more question before we finish, has any of the work you’ve done been paid work?

Jason:                      Yeah, the 12 month traineeship was paid work.

Facilitator:                But the nine years with The Chronicle wasn’t?

Jason:                      Yes, it was paid.

Facilitator:                It was?

Jason:                      Not wholly paid, but it was paid.

Facilitator:                It was paid, okay. Do you think that you’ve had an alright run as far as paid work goes? In terms of your ambitions?

Jason:                      I’m currently in paid employment, yeah. I think so, yeah. I suppose I'm prepared to do things like a voluntary thing for a little while but if it’s going to lead to a paid position, yeah, that’s what I'm ...

Facilitator:                So you don’t feel like you’ve lucked out at any point in that process?

Jason:                      No, but I suppose that is just the voluntary sort of stuff was there. Because in some ways I think of it as well it gives them a chance, whoever it is, a chance to see what you can do. That’s what happened with this particular job at the moment. I did a couple, a week’s voluntary work so it gave them a chance to see what I can do. It’s different work, different thing to what I’d been doing. But I suppose there is a thing where you’ve got to cut off, you can only do voluntary work and I think as well you know like me or people with disability they are just like anyone else. And if someone was getting paid say to push trolleys, well so should those with disability. If they want to do the same job, yeah.

Facilitator:                That’s the bottom line.

Jason:                      That’s the bottom line.

Facilitator:                [looks at awards Jason is holding] What are these things that you’ve brought in?

Jason:                      Well where do we want to start?

Facilitator:                Where do you want to start?

Jason:                      I suppose this is in 2000, was to do with the disability access week.

Facilitator:                Award 2000, yep.

Jason:                      It was media, it doesn’t say it there, but it was to do with media excellence and for me that was, I suppose that was a reward for giving those people with disability a voice. But yeah, this is ...

Facilitator:                It says in recognition of an outstanding contribution to increase community access for people with a disability and making of the organisation.

Jason:                      Yeah, this was good and even the award I’ve got with the centenary.

Facilitator:                The centenary medals?

Jason:                      Centenary medals, they were good to be recognised but it’s supposed to give, like this is not only for me it’s for, and same with the centenary medals, it’s not only for me, it’s for those who sort of helped to get where I am through, say, from Personnel West through to those who I interviewed and were prepared to tell their stories.

Facilitator:                Yeah.

Jason:                      Like it’s not just, it’s just not me.

Facilitator:                No.

Jason:                      It’s the same ...

Facilitator:                It’s all the people in Toowoomba who let you invade their lives for a little while.

Jason:                      Yeah, and that’s what ...

Facilitator:                It’s incredible, Jason.

Jason:                      And same with the centenary medals. It’s just the same sort of thing.

Facilitator:                But you don’t think, what you were saying before that you’d live your life rather than by the standard of what can’t I do, you just do it. Like you were riding your bike all the way from your house into town every day and to work and I think it’s a 10k round trip you were telling me before and all the stuff that you’ve done. You just do it, you don’t think about limitations, just get on with it.

Jason:                      Well, I don’t know, you just don’t think of, yeah I’ve got a vision impairment but that’s, I suppose that’s at the back. That’s just ...

Facilitator:                You don’t notice, why should anybody else?

Jason:                      It’s just like, I suppose I always remember a guy who spoke and he’d had a car accident, I think it was a car accident and he ended up in a wheelchair and his sort of thing was you can sink or you can swim. It’s your choice what you do. Like sink, you can say woe is me and yeah I suppose woe is me and let the disability or whatever it might be just come and consume you or you can get out and start swimming which means you can swim and you can actually go forward and you can say well, I have a disability but hey, we’ll just get on with it.

Facilitator:                For you, your stories all about pushing past, just getting on?

Jason:                      Yep.

Facilitator:                And proving that it can be done.

Jason:                      If someone says you can’t, well, I try to see if I can do it, yeah. And like at least in the end, at least that way you can either say well yep, I had a go but maybe it wasn’t quite, it wasn’t up my alley or whatever. But at least you can look back later and say well I had a go.

Jason:                      Really I think that sums it up pretty much.