In The Media | 4 February 2015

Technology the key to changing the culture of disability

Dr Mark Bagshaw insists there is nothing remarkable about a person with a disability having a successful career.

He has been countering this perception throughout his own career, which at its height had him managing a $1.2 billion international portfolio as a business executive for IBM and travelling five months of the year.

What drew him excessive admiration, he said, was the fact that he has quadriplegia, and has used a wheelchair since injuring his spinal cord in a diving accident when he was 16.

“Why do you think that’s so amazing?” he would ask those quick to praise him. “Man in wheelchair has ordinary job, shock horror.”

“It’s not the disability that’s the problem here. It’s incredibly challenging for people with a disability to be dealing with a world that doesn’t expect very much from them.”

Source: The Sydney Morning Herald

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