The UK’s first fully-blind overseas ambassador tells BBC News her disability can help build relationships with influential people around the globe, ahead of taking up a role in Slovenia in August.
Victoria Harrison has until the summer to become fluent in Slovene before taking up her post in the capital city, Ljubljana.
Learning languages is any foreign diplomat’s remit – but “disability prep”, as she calls it, is unique to her situation.
Getting used to a new home and memorising new routes to work and local cafes with her guide dog, Otto, are just some of the tasks Victoria has on her list alongside her day job.
“In my first [foreign] posting, I didn’t realise there was an amazing cafe very close to where I lived – because I’d walk past it and didn’t know,” she says.
Born with normal vision, Victoria developed an eyesight condition that gradually worsened throughout her teens.
She eventually lost her sight after university.
“It wasn’t always easy growing up with less good eyesight than other people,” she says – but she never felt her condition would hold her back from her dream job, diplomacy.
As a teenager, TV reports on the fall of the Berlin Wall, in 1989, sparked Victoria’s interest in the world of foreign diplomacy.
She asked her father what a diplomat did and learned they “get paid to travel the world, learn languages and represent their countries”.
“I thought that sounds fantastic,” Victoria says.
‘Really competitive’
In 1995, the Disability Discrimination Act, since replaced by the Equalities Act, was introduced to remove barriers faced by disabled people in employment.
A year later, Victoria’s first chance to work at the Foreign Office came in the form of an undergraduate work-experience scheme. Her main concern about her ability to do the job was not based on her disability, but her own insecurities.
“I thought maybe I’m not clever enough. I didn’t go to Oxbridge. It’s really competitive,” she says.
The Foreign and Commonwealth Office offered Victoria the internship in Moscow – but when she revealed she was registered blind, “there was a kind of silence… at the other end of the phone”.
“They then said, ‘we don’t have any blind people in our organisation’,” she says.
Victoria remembers feeling “surprised” rather than “disheartened” by the phone call.
She had always thought being a junior, or a woman, were more likely to hold her back in her career than being blind.
The placement was confirmed a few days later.
‘A novelty’
In 1997, Victoria got a permanent role in the Foreign Office – becoming the first person with a declared disability to work there.
“I was a novelty,” Victoria says.
“There weren’t [other] people who had significant disabilities.”
The Foreign Office was still finding its feet with the changes that came with the Disability Discrimination Act, and it took six months before Victoria was given a computer she could use.
“It wasn’t that people didn’t want to support me,” she says.
“It was just the fact that this was an organisation where we were… very much building the plane as we were flying it.”
