People with disabilities are everyday people. We’re doing the same things as everyone else, only we can’t do it the same way as everyone else.
For the first three years of his life, Sid Miller existed in murk and murmur, a world of shadowy, sketchy shapes and faint, infrequent sounds.
He was born prematurely in faraway Thailand. He weighed only one kilogram — the same heft as a pineapple or a head of cabbage. The auditory nerves in both ears were severely damaged and the retinas in both eyes were detached.
He underwent a dozen surgeries before he turned 1, then was sent to an orphanage.
He didn’t utter a word until he was 3 years old.
Today, Miller is 19. He wears thick-lensed glasses to help him distinguish contours and outlines; he’s completely blind in his right eye and legally blind in his left eye, which lacks peripheral vision and depth perception. He wears hearing aids in both ears.
Miller is deafblind, a rare condition of combined hearing and vision loss. In the United States, about 10,000 individuals between infancy and 21 years old identify as deafblind. In Wisconsin, there are currently 157 children on the state’s Deafblind Registry.
But his disabilities have not deterred him. And after hardly saying anything for three years, he certainly has found a clear voice.
“In public school, they always thought I would be the quiet kid. But I wasn’t,” Miller said. “I wanted to ask questions; I wanted to be a leader. But it’s hard to lead when no one lets you try to lead. People with disabilities should have a voice. I’m not afraid to use my voice.”
Now Miller is ready to give college a try. He plans to study graphic design at Milwaukee Area Technical College in the fall, earn an associate degree, find work in the field, and live on his own in Milwaukee.
“People with disabilities are everyday people,” he said. “We’re doing the same things as everyone else, only we can’t do it the same way as everyone else.”
He will attend MATC thanks to a $10,000 scholarship he received from the Lighthouse Guild, a national group that provides rehabilitation, assistive technology, mental health services and programming to people who are blind or visually impaired.
Miller was one of 17 students from across the country to receive a scholarship from Lighthouse. The awards are based on academic excellence and merit.
“These remarkable students have demonstrated exceptional academic achievement and perseverance,” said Thomas Panek, president and CEO of Lighthouse Guild. “We are proud to support them as they pursue their goals and contribute their talents to the world.”
Starting a new life
When Miller was 3, Todd Miller and Jennifer Robers Miller traveled to Thailand from Wisconsin and adopted him. His new parents christened him Siddhartha, to honor the name Gautama Buddha had before he attained enlightenment. The family lived in Janesville for several years, then moved to Cedar Grove, about 50 miles north of Milwaukee along Lake Michigan.
In elementary school, Miller learned to play the piano. In middle school, he taught himself to play the guitar and the drums.
But aside from the music, attending public school wasn’t pretty. “I was bullied. I was made fun of. I was tripped a lot,” he recalled. “I didn’t have the greatest experience. It was rough.”
After ninth grade, his family enrolled him in the Wisconsin Virtual Academy, an online public school serving students across the state, for his last three years of high school.
The difference was startling.
“My academic performance jumped by leaps and bounds,” Miller said. “I had a ton of great teachers. They encouraged me to ask questions and to participate.”
Miller was inducted into the National Honor Society and, in March 2025, he was nominated for Student of the Month. He received his high school diploma in June.
Preparing for college
Miller said he selected MATC because of their Student Accommodations Services (SAS) and Graphic Design associate degree program.
At the college, SAS ensures that students with disabilities receive equal access opportunities to all programs, courses and services according to federal laws, including the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990.
Services and accommodations available include disability specialists to provide one-on-one support, adaptive/assistive technology, computers with enlarged text, note-taking, sign language interpreting and tape recording of lectures.
Miller said he already has arranged to have a captionist, a person who types what the instructor is saying into a computer program, so he can read the words on his own computer in real time.
For Miller, graphic design, like making music and playing instruments, is another way to express himself. “I love art, I love creating and I love technology,” he said. “I can draw very well, and I am very good with technology. At MATC, the Graphic Design program has classes that get right to the point of what I want to do.”
He already has used assistive technology to experiment with graphic design and has used a 3D printer at the Wisconsin Deafblind Technical Assistance Project, a federal program that provides technical assistance to deafblind students. Using the printer, he created a sailboat, a fidget ring and an infinity cube.
This summer, Miller interned at Career Coaches of Wisconsin, which specializes in customized employment solutions and coaching to accommodate people with disabilities. He will help design e-commerce websites.
Once he starts at MATC, he plans to live at home and have his father, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, drop him off and pick him up at MATC. Miller also wants to explore Milwaukee as much as he can.
He’s excited and nervous about his future.
“This is a new journey,” he said. “There are a lot of things I have conquered in my life, but I still have fears. Sometimes I worry about whether or not I’ll be able to get a job or find a place to live. But I believe I am responsible, motivated, and dedicated to achieving independence, not only for myself, but also to support and inspire others. I believe you can always be a role model, a person people look up to.”
About MATC: As Wisconsin’s largest technical college and one of the most diverse two-year institutions in the Midwest, Milwaukee Area Technical College is a key driver of southeastern Wisconsin’s economy and has provided innovative education in the region since 1912. Nearly 30,000 students per year attend the college’s four campuses and community-based sites or learn online. MATC offers affordable and accessible education and training opportunities that empower and transform lives in the community. The college offers more than 180 academic programs; and transfer options leading to bachelor’s degrees with more than 40 four-year colleges and universities. Overwhelmingly, MATC graduates build careers and businesses in southeastern Wisconsin. The college is accredited by the Higher Learning Commission.