Growing up Blind Conversations with Dr. G
Host Dr. Grace Ambrose-Zaken, President and CEO Safe Toddles non-profit and inventor of the Pediatric Belt Cane for blind toddlers discusses why her mission is to make walking safer for toddlers with a mobility visual impairment or blindness. Listen to: Interviews with families, professionals, adults who grew up with a mobility visual impairment or blindness, and more. For more information about this blog contact: 845-244-6600, info@safetoddles.org
Growing up Blind Conversations with Dr. G
Steve born 1947 first O&M lesson in High School
Stephen Dresser –was born in 1947, he got his first long cane in 8th grade, but he wasn’t taught to use it as a probe and just hooked it on his arm. It wasn’t until high school that he finally received O&M instruction. He remembers having to be convinced that it was possible to move through space without bruises, tripping and clunking into the world with his body.
Steve remembers having a great deal of independence in his years growing up before O&M instruction and acquiring the skills he needed to move further afield as a teenager seeking to travel further from home. He has shared many great insights into the difficulties experienced of moving about day to day before the advent of the smart phone – so many folks should be really mindful of the importance of getting children born blind access to smart phones – specifically iPhones as early as possible.
In high school, Steve had to be convinced to swing the long cane back and forth in front of him before that He relied on his feet – long toes. His resilience is remarkable, and he beat the odds. He was ready and able to benefit from the long cane and O&M instruction once he began in high school. He went on to live a rich life married and well respected in his field. Research on his generation of learners born blind showed him to be an exception- most children born blind grew up unable to benefit from O&M instruction so late in life and that is why it became essential to begin providing O&M instruction as part of early intervention. Even then it hasn’t be as effective until the advent of the pediatric belt cane.
Visit our website: Email: info@Safetoddles.org TikTok Facebook YouTube
Thanks for listening! Please, leave us a review, ask questions and share with your friends!!
Please donate to help Safe Toddles Inc. achieve our mission to provide blind toddlers with a solution for walking independently with safety.
If you know anyone who needs a belt cane - go to ObtainCane
You can go where you want to and you found your way here to the Safe Toddles Podcast dedicated this year to sharing the Orientation and Mobility memories of over 100 employed adults who are blind or mobility visually impaired. Today’s show is the interview conducted the interview was conducted Jan. 11, 2000- 11 days after the world sat and waited to end because of the worry of the Y2K computer glitch that thankfully was fixed in time.
Stephen Dresser –was born in 1947, he got his first long cane in 8th grade, but he wasn’t taught to use it as a probe and just hooked it on his arm. It wasn’t until high school that he finally received O&M instruction. He remembers having to be convinced that it was possible to move through space without bruises, tripping and clunking into the world with his body. Well let’s just let Steve tell his story…
Q. …state your full name.
A. OK. My full name is Stephen Dresser.
Q. Your date of birth.
A. My date of birth is 1947
Q. And where were you born?
A. I was born in Hartford.
Q. Connecticut?
A. Connecticut, yup.
Q. Where do you live now?
A. I’ve lived in Connecticut all of my life.
Q. OK. And what…
A. You know that old New England joke about that?
Q. No, what?
A. Where they say, have you’ve lived here all your life, and the guy says, not yet.
Q. [laugh] No, I hadn’t heard that one. [laugh]
A. Yeah, I’ve, um…
Q. I’m from the South, myself.
A. Oh, OK.
Q. I’m sort of transplanted up here in New York. [laugh] Trying to make my way.
A. Oh.
Q. What do you do for a living?
A. Uh, I’m systems developer, which is my title, and, if you want to think of it as a computer programmer and analyst, that’s probably the terms that more people are familiar with.
Q. OK.
A. I’ve been doing that for the last 25 years or so.
Q. U huh.
A. And, before that, I worked as a drug counselor for about three years in a couple of different programs, residential, ah, what they called therapeutic community, and also in an outpatient clinic. And, uh, before that it was school.
Q. Where did you go to college.
A. I went to college at the University of Connecticut, which was a marvelous place for getting to learn about mobility because it was like a little city.
Q. Oh, really?
A. Yup. The campus, uh, the Storrs campus has a population, or had a population then of about 15,000 and…
Q. What did you call it? The what campus?
A. The Storrs…that’s if location. The University of Connecticut is located in a town called Storrs…S-T-O-R-R-S
Q. Oh.
A. …and it really was like a little city and, for me, it was great because for the first time in my life I was in a place where everything I could possibly want was in walking distance.
Q. Oh, I bet that was nice.
A. I guess I kind of took it on as a personal challenge to learn as much as I could about the campus, and I did over the four years, and it was really… That was probably where I learned to appreciate both the cane and mobility. I mean, I’ve always been very mobile, even in my own neighborhood. When I was a kid, I walked around in places where there were no sidewalks and crossed streets where there were no traffic lights. Oops, can you hang on a second…
Q. Sure.
A. I’m getting another call here, which I’m going to get
rid of.
Q. OK. What’s your highest degree?
A. Uh, Bachelor, uh, Bachelor of Arts, actually.
Q. And, how long have you had a vision impairment?
A. Uh, all my life.
Q. And, what’s the name of it?
A. Uh, they used to call it RLF; now they call it ROP…retinopathy of prematurity.
Q. When did you first realize you were visually impaired?
A. Well, you know it's hard to, you know I think…I think I was probably around four or five when I realized it.
Q. Uh huh.
A. And I think the reason that I realized it was because I was told. Uh…
Q. Right.
A. By my parents. But you know it didn’t occur to me really that there was anything different about me. I mean I just did all the things that I did and I just didn’t…I guess I… I don’t remember it. You know, it’s nothing that was terribly traumatic. I guess I just sort of… I seem to remember it just kind of gradually filtering into my consciousness, but I don’t, I don’t remember any big transition or a real traumatic shock about it.
Q. When did you first learn to travel independent of another person?
A. Uh, well, I’ve been… I guess I’ve been doing some degrees of it since Junior High, anyway.
Q. Uh huh.
A. And, certainly I never… I mean I guess obviously when I went somewhere as a kid I would always, I would be with my parents, but, you know, for instance, around the home and stuff, I was always independent. In my neighborhood, my parents encouraged me to be. Uh, you know, which means I got lost a few times like any kid, but I pretty much knew the neighborhood. And I always… Wherever I wanted to go, I went.
Q. So, you weren’t really restricted in any way.
A. No.
Q. Did you have a device, a tool to travel with?
A. No. Well, not until I got into Junior High, at least. Actually, I think I was in eighth grade when I got my first cane.
Q. Did you have some vision before then.
A. No. I’ve never had any.
Q. So, your parents were encouraging you to travel, but you didn't have a cane.
A. Yeah.
Q. [laugh] And did you get into any sort of scrapes because of that, or did you…
A. No.
Q. …did you develop any kind of strategies?
A. I guess I…you know, there were things I banged into and fell over and, and, and…you know, I don’t remember getting seriously hurt. I think I must have developed some facial vision early on, although I didn’t know that’s what it was called.
Q. Ah.
A. Facial vision being that sort of sixth sense that, they tell me, comes from being able to sense the motion of air currents with your hearing.
Q. Right.
A. I didn’t know what it was at the time, but I certainly used it as much as I could.
Q. For what?
A. Uh, just to try and sense upcoming obstacles. I used to ride a bike when I was a kid and I used to use that to keep myself pretty much on the straight and narrow going up and down the driveway.
Q. Neat.
A. Um.
Q. So, you rode bikes?
A. Yup, yup.
Q. Mostly in the driveway.
A. Yeah. I didn’t want to try that on the street because we didn’t have any sidewalks around our area.
Q. Right.
A. That would have been a little too dangerous, but I certainly… Ah, around the driveway, around our lawn, I was always doing that. Nobody every told me I couldn’t, so I just did.
Q. Sure. What other kinds of play memories do you have? Um, bikes… Did you do…
A. Um, I used to go to my uncle’s…my aunt and
uncle’s farm in the summertime every year and we did
a lot of walking around through
wooded areas and rough
ground and all sorts of, you know… Climbing up over
rocks, you know, around brambly places. It was just,
you know, whatever the kids did, I just did it along with them.
Q. Right.
A. You know, and sometimes that involved me walking with one of my cousins because, obviously, they knew where they were going and I didn’t always, but it also meant that I learned to get pretty good about, ah, handling all sorts of situations where the terrain was uneven and, you know, somebody might step down and I didn’t, or I might step down and they didn’t. I just learned to handle that kind of stuff.
Q. Would you, like, hold onto them, do you think?
A. Yeah. I would, ah, hold onto somebody’s arm or elbow maybe, Uh, you know, that seemed to work best because, if they taking my arm… You know, obviously, I’m out in front which isn’t too good here. Trying to get your cues here as to where to go.
Q. And you remember, sort of, coming to that realization back then?
A. Yeah. I don’t know that we…I don’t know that we ever did it consciously.
Q. Right.
A. It just sort of seemed to work best.
Q. Yeah.
A. You know, it worked.
Q. Yeah.
A. You know, we did what worked.
Q. Yeah.
A. You know, there’s and awful lot that worked. Nobody ever … You know, there were certainly no formal lessons. Ah, I remember, of course, I remember doing things like driving tractors and stuff, which was a lot of fun.
Q. How did you do that?
A. Ah, that was basically called up… The tractor goes pretty slowly…
Q. Uh huh.
A. …and people in the area were just directing me which way to turn the wheel.
Q. Oh, fun.
A. And… Oh, yeah. I mean, you know, that was… So, I guess, in a way, that kind of gave me a sense of being in a vehicle and having a sense of some…what direction I was going in, although I certainly wouldn’t want, you know, to try it on the open road.
Q. Right, well.
A. But, again, I was riding bicycles and doing things like that so it never occurred to me that I couldn’t do them.
Q. Sure.
A. Fortunately, my family always just let me do these things.
Q. So, now, what kind of school did you go to there?
A. I went to the Connecticut Institute for the Blind, which was called Oak Hill.
Q. Uh huh.
A. I went there through my eighth grade and then I went to public high school after that.
Q. And, now, you have said several times that you started cane travel in Junior High.
A. Well, I did to the extent that Junior High was about the time that I started realizing that if I was going to get to visit some of my friends who lived a little further away from my house than just next door, I was going to have to walk along the street. And somebody said that I should at least have a cane with me to let other, other cars know that I was handicapped, as it were. Which I didn’t like the idea of at all.
Q. Right.
A. Because I hadn't been used to seeing myself that way. And at the time, I didn’t know enough to use the cane to get any useful information ‘cause I hadn’t had any mobility instruction. So, you know, for the first couple of years or so I just carried it with me. Uh, made sure that I stayed very close to the side of the street, of course.
Q. So, now, I want to pick those years apart a little.
A. Yeah.
Q. So, you go the Connecticut…Oakhill…
A. Um hm.
Q. …and, uh, is anybody using a cane in your school?
A. No, no. Not there.
Q. No.
A. No, no. In fact, kids just ran around, you know, without them.
Q. Right. Any instruction on knowing where you were? Any orientation to the building?
A. I think some of the night students got some and I got a little. I remember, one year, we had a mobility instructor come in and teach us some classes and he had… the one technique I remember him showing us was putting your arm sort of across your chest about, maybe, or, I don’t know, about three or four inches away from the front of your body so that, if you bumped into something, your arm would hit if first and you wouldn’t just, run smack into it. Uh, and that was really about the only instruction I had.
Q. Do you use that technique still?
A. Ah, not…not a whole lot, really.
Q. So [laugh] so, now, I’ve talked to some people who’ve said at the schools for the blind…a lot of times they had kids there who could see and they would be used for…they were considered the sighted students and would be used for a sighted guide. Was that the case at…
A. That never, that never ha--I don’t remember that ever happening.
Q. No.
A. I mean, it certainly didn’t happen for me. Now, maybe there were kids there who did that.
Q. Right.
A. I don’t remember…um, anyone doing it. I suppose, if we went somewhere… But a lot of times I remember walking with kids who were just as blind as I was.
Q. Right.
A. And, and, I don’t even know if it was a question of one or the other of us guiding each other. We just were… I always thought of it as just walking with my friends.
Q. Yeah.
A. You know, and if we took arms or, or, held hands, or did whatever we did, it was just to… I don’t know, it was just because we liked being with each other.
Q. Sure.
A. I don’t remember any conscious, uh…
Q. It wasn’t, like, when you were like at the farm and you were actually with sighted people.
A. No, that was a much more conscious thing.
Q. Yeah.
A. Because I knew quite clearly that my cousins could see and they knew where they were going and I didn’t really know where we were going. So, you know, if I was going to keep up with the crowd, it was a whole lot easier to do it that way than to just walk along on my own and hope.
Q. So, would you… You were a day student?
A. Yeah.
Q. So, how did you get to and from school?
A. My mom and dad brought me to and from.
Q. And, then… So, did you desire any more independence?
A. Well, I think in some ways I…I… It was… I think I was much more aware of being independent than some of the kids who were night students there.
Q. Mm hm.
A. I mean, I remember being tremendously frustrated by things like having to ask permission to go from, say, one end of a dormitory hall to another to visit somebody in their room. Cause I didn't have to do that kind of stuff at home. I think my horizons were wider than some of theirs in that respect, because when I was home and if wanted to go over an visit a neighbor, I just walked over their house.
Q. Neat.
A. Um, and, you know, these kids…a lot of them were, were, in many ways, the most independent stuff some of them ever got was in schools for the bind.
Q. Right.
A. Because when they were home, they just stayed in their houses for the weekend and then were shipped back to school on Monday.
Q. Hm.
A. And…but, for me, it was really the opposite kind of thing. I mean, home was freedom for me and school was confinement.
Q. Yeah.
A. A different perspective.
Q. So, come Junior High, you’re going to want to do more walking and they say, OK, hold this cane. [laugh] That was… Did you get any instruction later on, then?
A. When I got into high school, um, I decided… Again, because I was doing more walking on really busy streets, uh, I decided… We decided that it was really time for me to get a little more serious mobility instruction.
Q. ‘Cause what were you doing up until then? I mean, how far were you going?
A. Uh, well, when I was in he eighth grade, I remember traveling about a quarter of a mile.
Q. Is that right?
A. But it was, it was up a street that was not terribly busy. But then, when I got into high school, I started walking in the other direction from my house. The street that I wanted to walk on was kind of a main drag, and, I mean, you know, really a main drag with big, heavy trucks coming up and down the road. That sort of thing. And, um, I decided it was probably a good time to start learning how to use the cane correctly. Also…
Q. Because of, just because of the amount of traffic?
A. Yeah, I just figured it was a little… You know, there might be some safety issues here. I mean, if I’m going to have this thing anyway, that I should carry… The very least, it seemed to make sense to me to at least learn how to use it so it would do me some good.
Q. So, at this point, were you sort of holding it?
A. Yeah, it was just… It was one of those metal canes with the crook on it.
Q. Uh huh.
A. And I’d just sort of hang it over my arm and I thought, well, this is kind of stupid.
Q. [laugh]
A. You know, maybe somebody can see this but it sure isn’t doing me a whole lot of good.
Q. Right.
A. So, you know, let’s either make it work or get rid of it.
Q. And, who taught you how to cross streets?
A. The only thing I remember about that is the kid is…My mom did that. Mostly, what she said was make sure that you listen very carefully before you go across and, if you hear a car coming, don’t.
Q. Right.
A. And, you know, because she was standing outside with me and tell me when, the cars were in fact coming, I learned to listen pretty well. And…
Q. Neat.
A. …I never got into any problems that way.
Q. Neat. So, then you realized, though, you wanted to even go further and there was more traffic.
A. Yeah.
Q. And, so, in high school you were now in the day school, the public school.
A. That’s right.
Q. Is that right?
A. That’s right.
Q. And what happened?
A. Well, um, at that point, they brought in a mobility instructor from the Board of Educational Services for the Blind and he… Part of the deal was that I wanted him to teach me some strategies for crossing the really tricky intersection.
Q. Neat.
A. I had no idea how I was going to… I mean, I knew I could cross them but, not only did I want to cross them, but I wanted to be able to navigate them so that I’d end up going where I wanted to go instead of just, you know, randomly wandering around. And I, we… Well, um, my mom and I both kind of felt that we needed a little more help with that and, at the same time that he gave me some strategies for that particular area in my town, he also started teaching me cane technique.
Q. So, it sounds like he valued what you brought to the situation.
A. Oh, yeah, he was very good about that. I mean, he never tried to, in any way, tell me that I was doing too much. The only thing he did was, he made it so that I could do what I did and do it better.
Q. For example…
A. Well, one of the things that I really had, as I told you, when I first started using the cane, I really hated the idea of doing it…
Q. Yeah.
A. …and one of the things that this mobility instructor did, smart person that he was, was… He was able to convince me that it was really worth my while to use a cane.
Q. Hm.
A. And he didn’t do it by preaching at me at all.
Q. Neat.
A. I mean, he didn’t even try that technique ‘cause he knew that wasn’t going to work. And, of course, I knew it wasn’t going to work.
Q. [laugh]
A. What he did instead was, he took me over to the high school and he… Actually, he did several things. He used the school as a place where he could teach me more cane technique. Um, but the first time he took me in there, he took me into the school on a day when…just before school was opening…when they were cleaning the place up. And they had desks and everything all over the hallways. I mean, it was just one total mess. And he said, now, I just want you to use the cane techniques that I’ve taught you and walk down this hall. And, of course, he was signaling to people for them NOT to move things out of my way. And I clanged and crashed and, you know, walked down the hall but I didn’t hurt myself on anything. I didn’t even run into anything…my cane did, but I didn’t. And he said, OK, now that’s your first lesson. You couldn’t have done that without a cane. And I was sort of convinced and that was kind of…
Q. Um hm.
A. He let it lie and didn’t put it push much more that day. But a few days later, we were…he brought me out into the parking lot and said, we’re going to practice some cane technique out here on, on concrete. Well, while I was walking around with the cane, he had found a trash can which he surreptitiously put directly into my path so that I would have to hit it. Of course, he did it quietly so that I didn’t know it was there.
Q. Hm.
A. Of course, I did hit it and, you know, then I got around it. A couple of minutes later, I clanged into it again…
Q. [laugh]
A. …because he’d moved it somewhere else.
Q. [laugh]
A. And he just kept doing that to me…for about ten or 15 minutes. And he said, now, you see… You may not like this cane, but you’ve got to admit that, if you hadn’t had that cane, you’d have been tripping over the trash can because you didn’t know where it was. I said, you know, you’re right. And I was really hard to argue with the guy like that.
Q. Yeah.
A. He had very effective ways of convincing me that this was really going to help.
Q. Had you spent a lot of time with him on the technique of two-point touch before you went out and started using it? Was his method pretty rigorous?
A. Yeah. He did… I mean, when he was with me, he always made sure that I, that I, you know, did the technique properly and, you know, when he saw that I was, if he thought that I was getting sloppy in any way, you know, he would correct me. You know, kindly, but, you know, not…just not letting me get away with anything. And his reason… And he always followed it with explanation. You know, if you don’t do it the way I’m showing you, you’re going to end up getting yourself in trouble because you’re not going to know about things that are, that you need to know about. You know… So, he never made it a confrontational thing. It was always… He always believed in persuasion, and I think it really worked. I learned to do it well.
Q. What, what… After you got convinced… I mean, how did it progress? How many times a week did you meet? How long did you meet for? What all did you get to do?
A. Ah…
Q. It’s a long time ago.
A. It’s been a long time.
Q.[laugh]
A. It’s… You know, we’re talking a good 40 years ago, probably. Not quite 40, but close to 40. Um, I think… What I remember of it was that a lot of it was integrated into… It wasn’t so much that it was every week because he was one… I think, at the time, he was one of maybe… He may have been the only mobility instructor that Connecticut had.
Q. Wow.
A. So, you know, he was stretched very thin and a lot of it just ended up being that if he…his teaching me things was a combination of teaching me cane technique and
also developing strategies for getting places that I wanted to go. So, we did that, maybe, for a couple of weeks in the summer.
Q. So, for example, you would say, I want to be able to..
A. Yeah, I want to go visit my friend Pete and I’m not quite how I’m going to get there. Can we work out a strategy for doing that? And he’d come out and we would, in fact, do that. Or, I’d say, gee, I’m having trouble with the intersection of such-and-such and such-and-such ‘cause I can’t quite figure out what’s happening here. And he would come out and work with me on that.
Q. Neat.
A. Um, but, you know… What it also meant was that there were big gaps in between because he just couldn’t always come out and see me. He had other people he had to see.
Q. Right.
A. But, when he was there, he would, he would maybe… You know, he would, maybe, make it a three- or four-hour session doing different things.
Q. Oh.
A. So that, you know… And, I mean, he… We ran the gamut. We would, you know, travel outside, we’d… There was a…there was a point when I remember walking back and forth along the edge of the stage in the auditorium in our high school, you know, and he said, I want you to deliberately walk so that when you span the cane to one side, you’ll feel it go off the edge. I want you to stay as close to the edge as you can without falling over.
Q. Hm.
A. And, uh… You know, because you have to… One of the things I really had to learn to do was put my trust in that cane.
Q. Ah hah.
A. Because I’d been so used to trusting my extended feet, you know.
Q. Yeah.
A. You know, you walk around with six-and-a-half-foot toes…
Q. [laugh]
A. [laugh] …you’ll find everything. But, you know, I really had to learn to trust that cane and that was kind of an adjustment for me ‘cause I’d been used to doing it all my life without it.
Q. Yeah. When he was with you, did you… Did he walk next to you? Did you ever get a sense that he would, like, send you to places and he wasn’t with you?
A. Oh, yeah. He would deliberately disappear from my range of… In fact, he would say… Usually, he did not walk next to me because he said, if I walk next to you, you’re going to look to me for guidance. And, besides which, I may distract you and you may not pick up useful cues that you need to know.
Q. Oh.
A. For yourself. So, you know, I would walk along and he might drift off and be, you know…maybe 15 or 20 feet in back of me or somewhere up in front or off to the side or, who even knew where?
Q. Right.
A. Sometimes, I think he even deliberately walked into places where, if I tried to follow him, I would get myself into a whole lot of trouble.
Q. [laugh] What do you mean?
A. Well, I mean, he would…you know, circle around something that he knew was there and, if I were going to try to take the more direct route, I might end up hitting a barrier or something.
Q. Gotcha.
A. So, I would have to use my cane to find, you know. But he didn’t really want me to follow him, necessarily.
Q. Right.
A. And sometimes, he did things, like, go off someplace and make some sort of audible noise so that I would know something was there in the area that I wasn’t necessarily going need at that moment but might be useful later on. He was a great one for collecting that kind of information.
Q. Oh.
A. You know…
Q. For example…
A. Well, his whole method of teaching me… ‘Cause he was the guy who also gave me mobility when I went to U-Conn.
Q. Ah.
A. And he said… The first thing he did was he got down there and got a map of the campus and spent one whole day just walking around and figuring out for himself, based on the classes that I was going to have, and the locations they were, what might be useful routes. And he said, I’m going to teach you which will not necessarily be the shortest way to get there…you can pick those up for yourself…
Q. Um hm.
A. …but I’m going to teach you the route that everything in it will be connected, somehow, to everything else in it and you’ll begin to see patterns.
Q. Neat.
A. You can build on things that I first teach you so that, and later on, you can come up with your own shortcuts. You’ll probably find better ones than I’ve given you. But for now, you’re going to get a very good picture…a very clear picture of a lot of parts of the campus that you need to know about. So, and he did. I mean, it was the kind of thing we started out going from my dormitory to the physical science building.
Q. Um hm.
A. And he said, well, but if you were going over to
Humanities instead of going straight here, you would take a right and you’d walk down to the corner of this street. And we actually walked those routes.
Q. Um hm.
A. And by the time he was done… I mean, I was absolutely scared the first time I went to that campus.
Q. Sure.
A. It was the biggest place I’d ever tried to walk through. But, by the end of the three days, I knew that I would be able to get to my classes. And I pretty much did.
Q. So, in three days, really, it was…
A. Yeah. Three days of very intensive work.
Q. Neat.
A. Now, when… And, of course, and then followed by a two-week gap where I didn’t go back because it was…you know, I had to wait for school to open…
Q. Um hm.
A. …And I got lost a few times, so. But, he said, you’re going to get lost. You can expect to get lost. But he said, you know, don’t be afraid to ask directions—which I wasn’t…
Q. Um hm.
A. …although I think, for me, it was a sort of a…you know, one of those guy things where you never stop…
Q. [laugh]
A. …to ask directions no matter how lost you are. But, you know, if… And sometimes I got really lost, but I’ll tell you, the other thing is I really did learn that campus well.
Q. Yeah.
A. And by the end of the four years, well… ‘Cause the other thing that he couldn’t possibly teach me was that the campus was constantly under construction.
Q. Um.
A. So, wherever you walked, you ran the risk that someday the sidewalk you’d been counting on for years just wouldn’t be there any more.
Q. Yeah.
A. And, uh, you know, it got to the point where somebody would say, how do I get from point A to point B. and I'd say, well, you can’t go that way, there’s construction.
Q. [laugh]
A. You’d better go over here. [laugh] Or, if they’d ask, are you walking or driving? And it really got to the point where I could do that.
Q. Neat.
A. I could be in a car and I could tell exactly where we were on campus.
Q. Based on…
A. Based on curves and twists in the road.
Q. Um hm.
A. Because I’d walked it so many times.
Q. Right.
A. Um, and I’ve always been sort of that way anyway. Some people learn a route by saying, well, you know, you go four driveways down and then you take a right and then you go to the third sidewalk on the left and then you take a left… And I do some of that, but what I also do is, I have a kind of picture in my mind of the layout.
Q. Um hm.
A. And, so, a lot of times when I go someplace, I don’t… Even if I don’t go exactly the same route… I say well, you know, I know in general, this is the direction I want to go and if I find a way to do that… That’s a couple of sidewalks over of a couple of streets over, that’s OK. Doesn’t bother me. You know, I’ll do things like pay attention to where the sun is in the middle of the day because I can feel the heat.
Q. Um hm.
A. And if I know that, when I’m walking home, the sun is supposed to be on my left arm. And if it’s suddenly not there any more, I’ll realize that I’ve taken a wrong turn somewhere.
Q. Neat.
A. Or, I’ll listen well for instance. One time, I was walking home in the middle of the night from a friend’s house through a snow storm, which is probably about the worst travel conditions you could ever walk under…
Q. [laugh]
A. …because none of the sidewalks were there any more, the plows hadn’t been out.
Q. Oh. Gosh.
A. There were no cars so I couldn’t use the sound of traffic for a landmark. And I got lost.
Q. gee
A. And, I’m thinking, you know, this is really not a whole lot of fun and I don’t really want to be doing this two hours from now, especially if I’m walking around in the same circle. And then I heard a flag clanging against a flagpole and I said, Ah, now I know where I’m supposed to be. And I did use that sound and I was able to get myself back on track and continue home.
Q. Wow.
A. That was an interesting evening, I gotta tell you. I mean… I was real annoyed at the time but afterwards I looked back and said, you know, this was kind of a neat challenge.
Q. Wow. So you got your flagpole…
A. Yeah.
Q. …and how far…
A. And I used it as a landmark and got back on track and was able to find something else that was familiar…
Q. Um.
A. …you know, which is what people do when they drive.
Q. Yeah. Oh absolutely.
A. The difference is that everything we do that with are things that we can touch or, you know, I mean, it may be a drainage, you know, a little drain hole in the sidewalk or it may be a funny kind of a break in the shoulder of the road or, ah, maybe an uphill gradation just before you get to something. I mean, there’s just all kinds of stuff. But it can’t be, it can’t be the hot dog stand over on the corner that’s two blocks away. You know, it just has to be things that we can directly have contact with. Which is also something this same guy told me…the same mobility instructor. I learned a lot from him. I really think if I, if I have any, well… I think there are two things that contributed to my mobility skills. One was the fact that I had always been allowed to go wherever I wanted to, even when I was a little kid.
Q. Yeah.
A. And the other was this mobility instructor I had. He was just very good…
[side A ends—side B begins]
Q. He was good at persuading a rebellious high school student. [laugh]
A. Gee, well…
Q. Well, I mean… Two things I want to ask and I don’t know in which order. Your parents let you go and you would get lost and, I mean, how did you figure it all out? What were you able to teach yourself with that much freedom?
A. Well, I guess.. . I don’t remember formally, but I guess mostly it was things like, you pay attention to a lot of little things.
Q. Um hm.
A. You know, if you’re going to go somewhere, you have to figure out ways to know what direction you’re traveling in. Um, I mean… You know, it’s so hard to put it all together, because I've just--
Q. Yeah.
A. been doing it so long.
Q. It’s just, you know… You would leave your driveway…
A. Yeah.
Q. …to go see a friend which… I mean, do you think you were learning, like, the very first time you would go to a friend’s house you would go with…?
A. Oh, I probably would go with someone, oh yeah, the first time. I mean, they didn’t just send me off, you know.
Q. But, then, you would learn it and you would start going by yourself.
A. Yeah. And, and, and, you know… The more you do that, I mean, you’re…
Q. Yeah.
A. …familiar with something if you keep doing it. Now, later on, when I was in Junior High and it turned out that some of my friends lived, you know, quite a bit further up the road, well, then, Mom would do things, like, we would drive the route and she would count the number of driveways that there were that I would have to cross before I came to a corner, before I came to a… And some of the intersections weren’t corners, either. I mean, some of them… There was one that was just a "Y" in the road.
Q. Um.
A. Um, and, of course, we were always taught that you had to walk against the traffic…I mean facing the traffic, uh, which means the lefthand side of the road and the branch of the Y that I wanted was on the righthand side. That was kind of fun. [laugh.
Q. That was a hard one.
A. Yeah, but it was something I actually did master and, a few times I got a little bit lost and I took the left branch of the Y… Uh, of course, I soon realized that if I took the left branch, I would start going up a hill that was way to steep and as soon as I did that, I would simply cross the road at that point, walk back down, get to the point of the triangle, and just loop around that point of the triangle, then I’d be where I was supposed to be.
Q. Neat. And, so, this is your basic trial-and-error.
A. Trial-and-error…right.
Q. Neat.
A. You know, with as much instruction as they could give me, but, then, you know, there would come that point when you’d say, well, you know, you’ve had all the instruction we can give you. Now, you’re on your own and you’ve got to try it yourself.
Q. So, your mom really… You guys had worked out sort of a system together of things that helped you.
A. Yup.
Q. It helps me to know how many driveways there are, or something.
A. Yeah.
Q. Neat.
A. Yeah, and I mean, you know, it was kind of informal and it was, you know, probably, you know… I’m sure if…I’m sure there are whole courses that people could take that would tell them how to do this better, but…
Q. I don’t know. It sounds like it was pretty darn good to me. [laugh]
A. We just did what we could, and I guess maybe it never occurred to either of us that we didn’t know enough of what we were doing. You know, kind of, like, if you do what you want to do and if nobody ever tells you, you can’t, then you just never realize that you’re breaking all the rules.
Q. Um, how long did you work with your mobility instructor? Was it a year? Longer?
A. Well, it was on and off all through high school and again the summer between high school and college.
Q. Um hm.
A. Ah, and then, after that, not too much. Again, ‘cause I was on a campus where I knew pretty much what I had to do and by then, I was…I had learned enough… Well, then again, I guess because of all the traveling I’d done before and I had learned enough to start asking people how to do the things I wanted to do…you know, being able to ask the right questions to get the information I needed. You know, well, OK, you guys say it’s down here on the left, but what am I going to pass before I get there?
Q. Neat.
A. You know, how many buildings am I going to go by? You know, are there some streets in between here. Things like that. Which is sometimes a little tricky because sighted people don’t always think that way.
Q. Yeah.
A. They just kind of see this general picture of where they need to go and you just get there and not worry about all the little intervening…
Q. [laugh] True.
A. And, you know, sometimes that’s frustrating even now. I mean, I…
Q. Does the reverse also happen where they want to guide you around tiny little things? Like, it really is straight ahead, but there’s…
A. Yeah.
Q. …a sign in the way and they want you to go right left right left. You know…
A. Some of that happens, although usually…usually when people are giving me instructions, they aren’t that detailed about it.
Q. No.
A. They much more…they have much more of a tendency not to tell me the things I need to know. You know, somebody will say, it’s right across the street from the such-and-such. Well, you find out that right across the street really means two doors down.
Q. [laugh]
A. Oh, yeah, it’s sort of right across the street.
Q. [laugh]
A. But not really right across the street. Oh, yeah, that’s right…I forgot about that.
Q.[laugh]
A. Well, thanks a lot. [laugh]
Q. [laugh]
A. I’ve spent the last 20 minutes knocking on a door that I wasn’t even supposed to be at.
Q. [laugh] Right. So, that’s neat. Now, what travel tools… You use a cane now, is that right?
A. Yeah, yeah.
Q. How many different types of mobility tools have
you tried?
A. Well, I, I… As I say, I mostly use the regular, you know, folding cane. Uh, I have tried some of the electronic guides…
Q. Uh huh.
A. …and I’m really not all that impressed.
Q. Why is that?
A. Because it’s much too easy to fake them out.
Q. Ahhh.
A. They get confused and sometimes they don’t report things that you need to know and sometimes they report things that you couldn’t care less about.
Q. Right.
A. Um, and… Yeah, you know that was one of the things, too, I remember because some of those were around when I was in high school. I remember asking my mobility instructor if they were a good idea and he said, well, you can… I guess you can use them if you want to, but, you really want to keep it simple, because all you need to have is a battery die and if you’re in the middle of…and if your high-tech aid conks out (he didn’t say it that way because nobody said “high tech” then)… You know that was the essence of it. You know, the cane is so nice and simple and it will continue to work and you won’t have to worry about its failing you in the middle of something.
Q. Right.
A. Uh, and my experience since then has just pretty much confirmed that. I mean, I’ve seen some sophisticated aids, but I just didn’t think that they…you know when you got right down to it, I couldn’t do anything with them that I didn’t do with the cane…actually, the cane worked better.
Q. Neat. So, you have the folding cane…
A. Yeah.
Q. …um, with what kind of tip?
A. Uh, now I’m using…well, I like the big marshmallow
tip…
Q. Uh huh. Why is that?
A. Oh, it just feels nicer to me and I had a cane this summer that, they even had one of those, that not only was a marshmallow tip but it spun. And that was really nice.
Q. You liked that.
A. It was a nice light cane light and very sturdy. The only problem with it was…the elastic was way too thin and it broke.
Q. Yeah.
A. So I had to go back to using my older folding cane that also has the marshmallow tip but it doesn’t rotate and it’s not quite as light. It’s not quite as sturdy, but…
Q. So you have an aluminum…
A. Yeah. Yeah, the one that I was using was some kind of a, I forget what they call it…
Q. A carbon fiber, or graphite.
A. Yeah, carbon fiber, I think.
Q. Yeah.
A. Which I thought was a really neat idea but I was really disappointed about that elastic.
Q. They just need to work a little more on that.
A. Yeah, cause if they get the elastic the way it’s supposed to be, that would be a great idea ‘cause it’s a wonderful cane. I never that one like that since.
Q. Well, they make a light ones with the rigid. Would that be of interest? I mean…
A. What?
Q. They make rigid ones that are light. That, too.
A. The problem for me with the rigid one is that, I like to I, I travel on buses and it’s more of a pain to keep a rigid cane…
Q. Yeah.
A. You know I like to be able to fold them up.
Q. Yeah.
A. Now, of course, originally, I never used anything but a solid cane because, back in the ‘60s, the folding canes they had, especially at first, weren't very good. You know, they had those telescoping canes…
Q. sure.
A. …which had about 48-hour mobility before they got bent or broken.
Q. Oh.
A. And then they came out with folding canes where the sections snap into each other and, you know, ever since that happened, that’s what I’ve been using.
Q. Now, so, have you gotten your cane longer since you first started using a cane? Do you think it’s gotten longer or anything like that?
A. Well, [laugh] I mean aside from the fact that I’m taller, I guess, uh. It may have gotten a little longer. I…my need… The cane that I’m most comfortable with…well, I’m about 5’ 8” and the cane I’m most comfortable with is a 52-inch cane, which is a little bit longer than it’s supposed to be, but I tend to take fairly long steps.
Q. Um hm.
A. Um, I wouldn’t want it much longer than that, though, because I think then it would tell me information too soon, you know. I mean…
Q. Yeah.
A. And there’s just no percentage in, you know, knowing that you’ve got something eight feet away…I mean, I just… I can’t see what practical value a six-foot-long cane would have for me.
Q. Right. So you’ve given that some thought.
A. Yup.
Q. Neat.
A. You certainly don’t want it too short though because, as I say, since I do take long fairly long strides when I’m walking…
Q. Right.
A. …I could get into trouble.
Q. How many canes do you own?
A. Oh, let me think. I’ve got two that are good enough to be working canes and I’ve got that carbon fiber one that needs to get its elastic fixed. So, I guess right now three.
Q. And how do you decide which one you want to use? Obviously, you don’t use the broken one. [laugh]
A. No, no, I don’t use the broken one. Um, I use the, what can I say? Um, I guess a lot of it just is that if I get a cane that I like I use it until I can’t use it anymore.
Q. Um hm.
A. And I always keep, I always keep that second one, which is a little bit cheaper and the sections don’t snap together quite as nicely… You know, that’ll be my back-up if I need it.
Q. Yeah.
A. But, in general, you know, I… That one just sits in the closet collecting dust right now.
Q. Right.
A. And, of course, the third one is a moot point because it doesn’t, you know… The elastic broke.
Q. Where do you get your canes from?
A. Um. Well, I’ve gotten them from… The one that I use most, I think I got it from, gosh, I’ve had the thing about five years and I’m trying to remember where I got it, whether I got it from Maxi Aids or from Independent Living Aids. I think I got it from Maxi Aids because they happened to have one and I needed one. You know, it was one of those kinds of deals. I went to a convention and I needed one right away and
they had one. Sometimes I get them from Anne Morris, although I haven’t… Like, the one that I got from her is my back-up cane right now because I don’t think it’s well made.
Q. Yeah.
A. And the carbon fiber one came from a place called California Canes. It really interested me but, the, you know, again the problem with the elastic.
Q. Yeah.
A. So, I’m not particularly loyal to a given brand I don’t think…
Q. Yeah.
A. …and I’ve had some other ones from other places that I can’t even remember where I got them from. Some of which I liked real well and some of which I liked, you know, so so.
Q. How do you get to and from work?
A. Take the bus.
Q. Neat. Do you have any strategies that you’ve developed that make that, um, work for you?
A. For buses, you mean?
Q. Yeah.
A. Uh…
Q. Is that something you learned in mobility with your instructor”
A. No. That I actually didn’t. We didn’t have many buses in my hometown…
Q. Uh huh.
A. …so, I didn’t learn that until later. Uh, I don’t know, it’s… I don’t know that I have much of a formal strategy…
Q. [laugh]
A. …except that…
Q. I’m looking more for personal strategies.
A. …well, I usually make a point of asking the driver when I get on to let me know… I’ll tell him what stop I want to get off at…
Q. …Um hm.
A. …and ask him to please let me know when we get to that street. Uh, sometimes, again, if I get familiar with the route, I’ve learned to know now, for instance, on the way home, I know when we’re getting on to our street so that I usually remind the driver at that point that I want to get off at a certain stop. Some of them tend to forget…
Q. Ah.
A. …which is probably one of the most frustrating parts of bus travel there is. You know, you get somebody that you ask let me know when we get to such-and-such and he says yeah, and then you get there and he lets you know after you’ve gone by, which, of course, you know… Then it’s kind of a , well, gee, how far have we gone by and what am I going to have to do to get back?
Q. Right.
A. You know. But that I like to avoid if I can.
Q. So, you avoid that by…
A. Well, usually, I… I mean, most of the time I avoid it because… I try to anticipate when we get there, so I’ll ask the guy a few more times…
Q. Yeah.
A. …just hopefully to remind him so he won’t forget.
Q. Neat.
A. Uh, sometimes, I have also taken… If I’m in conversation with a passenger, I may ask the passenger because sometimes they know the routes better than the drivers.
Q. Oh. That’s interesting.
A. Yeah, I don’t… That’s something I don’t fully understand because if you’re driving a route, it seem to me…
Q. [laugh]
A. …that you would kind of have to know what the streets are.
Q. [laugh] apparently not.
A. I ran into one of these guys he other day and said… I said… I got on the bus… I knew I hadn’t had him before as a driver, so, I said could you let me know where Broad Street is. Well, I don’t go down Broad Street. I said, I know that, but I want to know when we get to the corner of Huntington and Broad, that’s where I get off. Oh, is that near Prospect Avenue?
Q. [laugh]
A. No, dummy, it’s not Prospect Avenue because Prospect Avenue intersects with Farmington. But I don’t go Broad Street, and we went round and round like this and I was getting very frustrated because I’m telling this guy what he needs to know and he still doesn’t understand. Now what do I do?
Q. [laugh] Right.
A. You know, at that… That morning I decided to ask somebody that I was talking to because they knew where I got off and I said, you know, I’m afraid this guy isn’t going to tell me. You know, and that actually worked out OK. They told me and the driver by then had sort of figured it out and he told me. But sometimes they don’t. I mean.
Q. Right.
A. That’s one of the things I don’t like and I wish that they would be more consistent about calling out the stops, but I also kind of think it’s hopeless. I haven’t figured out any good way to make that happen, you know. I know it’s the law, I know they’re supposed to do it. They know it’s the laws and they know they’re supposed to do it. Some of them are really good and some of them are really horrible.
Q. Right.
A. And, I guess in general one of my… I don’t know if this is a strategy exactly, but I always feel that it’s up to me to take as much control of the situation as I can and don’t assume that, just because there’s a law that says somebody has to do something in a certain way it’ll necessarily be done that way.
Q. Yeah.
A. Uh, you know, I mean sure, in a perfect world, I’d love to have electronic things that announce the bus stops or drivers that call them out regularly and did it, you know, nicely every day, but in the real world, I mean life just doesn’t work that way for anybody with anything.
Q. Yeah.
A. You know, so just try to figure out as many ways and I can to pay attention to what’s going on and to keep control of the situation.
Q. Um, when not at work, what sorts of transportation do you use?
A. Uh, well, when I can, I use buses. I’ve ridden trains, of course, because sometimes that’s the easiest way to get somewhere. Uh, I’ve flown on planes. Uh, and, of course, around here in Connecticut, transportation often boils down to getting rides in cars, so, you know, taxis are certainly an important part of it.
Q. Right.
A. Kind of a mixture of everything.
Q. So, um, what about trains? Anything that you’ve developed for that?
A. Trains I’ve always found to be one of the easiest modes of transportation there is because the railroad personnel… And it used to be more true before everybody got suit-conscious, that kind of thing, but the railroad personnel have always been very, very helpful. You know, they always come through the cars and they announce the stops and… You know the other thing is the train really only goes one of two ways.
Q. Right.
A. You can’t get too far off the route.
Q. [laugh] Although, amazingly enough I have managed to get on the wrong train and go to the wrong place. [laugh]
A. Oh, yeah, you can do that kind of thing. But, again, I’ve found in the station, the railroad personnel are quite, are quite helpful, and the conductors will often ask you, you know, what will you do when you get off? Will you need help getting to a taxi?
Q. Neat.
A. You know, and there would have been a time when I would have said, oh, no, I don’t ever need any help, ever, ever, and now I’m a lot less proud about that kind of thing because I feel like, you know, the important goal for me is to get where I want to go.
Q. Right.
A. I don’t have to prove to anyone else that I can do well with mobility. So, I just ask. If I need to get down to where the cabs are, I’ll tell them because a lot of times they can get me there faster than I can get there myself.
Q. Which, before, it was a matter of, what?… Deducing from what you heard?
A. Yeah, or just kind of pride of, well, look, I can figure this out by myself. and it's true, you can, but you can take a lot of time doing it.
Q. Right.
A. And, especially if you’re trying to… I mean, certainly, in the case of airline travel, you don’t want to waste a lot of time guessing in an airport. You just want to get where you need to go and get there quickly.
Q. So, what do you typically do with airline…airport travel?
A. With airport travel, I usually ask the flight attendants right on the plane. I let them know, look, you know, when we get there, I’m going to need to get to gate such-and-such. You know, again, I think it’s very important to do things like, know where your flight is from the ticket information. You know, don't, don’t just rely on the person who is looking at your ticket to tell you because they may or may not tell you.
Q. Right.
A. You should kind of know that stuff beforehand. Um, and so that you can say to the person, to a flight attendant, look, I have to be at gate 56. Can you, you know, can you radio ahead…’cause I know they do that now, they’ll radio ahead to the airport…to have somebody there to take you to the gate. And, you know, again…’cause I just don’t want to miss connections. And airlines are quite good about that. I mean, their whole business is getting people from one place to the other and in many ways, they’d just as soon help you out, not have you milling around because this makes things tougher for them. So, you know, that actually works out for my benefit.
Q. Have you noticed any difference in the kinds of services you get in airports by airport personnel through the years?
A. Oh yeah, I think, I think some people are, I think some people are very good and, again, it’s kind of, like, you know even just in life. Some people have no problem at all with blindness and some people just are totally floored by the whole situation and can never figure it out.
Q. Yeah.
A. And I think that’s true with just, you know, with people in airports as well. Well, I mean… Not only in airports, but in other places. One of the things that frustrates me is when people say things like, well, here, sit in this wheelchair. You know look, I don’t have a problem with my legs. All you have to do…all we have to do is walk where we’re going to go…
Q. [laugh]
A. …and, you know, I’ll take your arm and that will be that.
Q. Yeah.
A. I find that it’s often my responsibility to explain to people the best way to do something and just cut through the confusion and, you know, usually they want to know. I‘ve found very few people who don’t want to know.
Q. Right.
A. Um… If they feel that you are completely passive, then they’re going to try to figure out how to do it the best way they know and it may not be very good. So…
Q. Have you ever been asked to wait in a room that is not the gate…or for them to come and get you…or…
A. Yeah, and, and my reaction to that is that, to some extent, I wait, but if I think something is happening, I also try to pay attention to things like, how far away am I from the counter where the tickets are being taken. You know…
Q. Neat.
A. …because, usually, wherever they make you wait is going to be pretty close to where the gate is, if not exactly. Like, I try to pay attention to where I hear people walking. Uh, I try to keep some idea of where it sounds like they’re conducting official business and, if I think that they’ve forgotten me, I have no problem with going up to the counter and saying, look, are we moving now? Or, if I think I know where the gate is, and if it sounds like I hear the announcements for boarding, I’ll start moving in that direction.
Q. Yeah. I would have guessed that about you. [laugh]
A. The trouble is that, if you don’t…
Q. Yeah.
A. You can, because you know sometimes people forget just because simply because they’ve gotten diverted by something.
Q. Sure. It’s nothing against you.
A. No. And, and, I mean this is again the whole business of, you know, I’m the one that needs to get there so it’s up to me to make sure that I do. You know, I guess I could play the game by saying I’m not going to move ‘cause you said.
Q. [laugh]
A. You know. But that’s stupid. I mean, the only person that that gets in trouble is me.
Q. Yeah.
A. So, you know…I’m… Or even on a plane, you know, if they… I’ve, I’ve had the experience of people saying now, you wait until everybody else leaves and then we’ll et you out of here. And sometimes I’ll do that, it there’s a tremendous amount of people. But, if I have a pretty good idea that I can get to the front of that plane, I’ll just pick up my bags and go. Uh, and, you know… I’ve had people who have said oh, oh, we told you to wait. Yeah, I know, but, you know, I knew where I was going, so, I’m here. Let’s go. And sometimes it really is the best thing to do because you gain a few minutes that way.
Q. Yeah.
A. Um, also, I’ve pretty much made it a hard and fast rule that I try never to travel with more than I can fit into two carry on bags so I don’t have to get involved in the luggage business. I’m beginning to relax that a little bit because, you know, there’s only so much you can pack in a suitcase.
Q. That’s true.
A. So, I like to keep… I like to know where all my own stuff is and the easiest way to do that is not to have so much that somebody else has to take it.
Q. Right. So, then, you would get some assistance in locating your bag at the carousel.
A. Obviously, if I… Now my wife and I are going to Hawaii in February, and I have a feeling that I’m going to need to check our luggage and I’m going to have to rethink just how I do that. Uh, you know, pick up the luggage. But I’ve seen her do it and it seems to work pretty well. I’m just going to have to trust that it will.
Q. What’s that? What does she…
A. I mean, pick up some of the bigger pieces of luggage. You know, I’m not as paranoid about that as I once was because I’ve seen that it really does work and they usually don’t misplace your luggage.
Q. So, you’re really more concerned about the airline misplacing it, diverting it to the wrong place.
A. Yeah.
Q. Yeah.
A. Yeah, I mean, trains don’t move quite that fast and I keep having these visions of, you know, we sent your bags ahead, sir. Where is it you’re staying?
Q. [laugh] Um, have you ever been disoriented?
A. Oh, yeah.
Q. What are your strategies?
A. The first thing that I do if I’m that disoriented is try to listen to what’s going on around me and see if I can pick up some cues like are there open spaces? If people are moving, what direction they seem to be going in. Uh, you know, are there doorways, are there… If I’m outside, I’ll listen for traffic. Try to get as much from the environment as I can. You know, just stand still for a minute…don’t keep moving, because if you keep moving, you can get even more tangled up. And then once you’ve got some picture of something, make a move in a direction and see what you find. And, if somebody comes along, just ask. I mean, you know…how bad can that be?
Q. Right. How do…
A. But yeah, I mean, everybody gets… I don’t think you can, I don’t think you can be blind and be traveling and not get disoriented at some point. And if you think that you can, you’re going to set yourself up for a massive failure because, it’s, you know… It just doesn’t work that way.
Q. Good point. How do you feel about traveling alone to unfamiliar places?
A. Well, I guess… If, if I can get somebody to go with me, I like it better but I’m not terrified of it or anything. I’ve certainly done it in the past. I think I always feel an feel an initial sense of dread, like, well gee if I get lost what’s going to happen? But I’ve also usually found that, if that did happen, or if I did get confused, there was always some way out. Which I might not find until the moment of…you know the moment it happened.
Q. Right.
A. But, yeah, if I can get somebody to go with me, sure, that’s always nicer.
Q. Yeah.
A. But, you know, then, again…
Q. Well, what do you do to prepare for travel to an unfamiliar place?
A. Well, a lot times… Well it depends. Sometimes if it’s, for instance, if it’s totally unfamiliar, I just kind of figure, well, you know, we’ll just go and ask when we have to.
Q. Uh huh.
A. Uh, if it’s, say, for instance, around town, I might try to ask somebody if they know…if they can give me enough directions and enough specifics about a place that I can get there. Uh, I always try to get some sort of general idea where something… Well, you have to, anyway, because whether you take a bus or ask a taxi or ask directions, you’ve still got to know where you’re going. Um, if it’s a place like New York… I mean for instance, my wife and I went down to New York one time cause we wanted to see…we were going to a concert down there…and we got to Grand Central Station and just figured well, you know, there was no way I could get directions as to how to get out of here, so I figured when I get off the train, I’ll ask. And, as it turned out, the place was under construction anyway, so even if I’d gotten directions, it wouldn’t have done much good.
Q. Sure.
A. Somebody helped us out of the station and he says, where are you going, and I told him, and he says, how are you going to get there, and I said I guess we’ll call a cab. And he said, oh, no, don’t bother, I got plenty of time I’ll walk you up there. And he did.
Q. Oh. Hey. New Yorkers are nice. [laugh]
A. Yeah, I mean… And it was just a totally unexpected moment. I mean, you know, I had no idea it was going to be that way. I couldn’t have planned it if I tried.
Q. [laugh] You know, I have friends come visit me from Alabama from all over and they say things like, now you know, all we had to do was, for a second, look a little puzzled and somebody would come over and say, do you need help with that? Where are you going? …with the subway map in their hand, or whatever. [laugh]
A. I think that’s true in New York. I’m… And one thing I’ve noticed about New York that I really think is cool, is that everybody kind of, whether you’re sighted or blind, everybody’s got the same problem…
Q. Right.
A. …and that is that they’ve all got to get somewhere and they’ve all got to use public transportation…
Q. Right.
A. …to do it. And, in that city at least, everybody understands.
Q. Yeah.
A. In a place like Connecticut, you could stand there for hours and people whiz by in their vehicles and they don’t care ‘cause they’re driving.
Q. They just want you out the way. [laugh]
A. Yeah, right. But in New York, it’s, it’s… And I’ve noticed it, if they think you’re trying to get someplace, they’ll tell you what you need to know and they'll go on. And, and, my wife tells the story of literally being handed off from one person to another to another, you know, to get wherever she wanted to go.
Q. Neat.
A. And none of these people knew each other and it was just, you know, I’m going to here. OK, well, then, when I get to there… Hey, buddy, where are you going? Well, I’m going over there. OK, fine…you take care of her. And they’re very good about that. They really are.
Q. Neat.
A. I mean, if… A lot of people wouldn’t think that New York is that kind--
[tape 1 ends. Tape 2 begins]
Q. And, then, it’s got all the public transportation.
A. Yup.
Q. It’s really set up pretty well.
A. Yeah. But I think, in terms of attitude, you know everybody’s going… Everybody that's moving, is doing the same thing, so, you know, they all understand what the problem is and they don’t worry about the fact that you’re blind, they just worry about where do you want to go.
Q. Yeah.
A. And that’s really the important part of it anyway.
Q. How do you establish your position in the environment?
A. Um, well, I guess… I guess the thing that I try to do most is a lot of listening. I…trying to get a sense of what’s going on around me. You know, if I’m in a…as I said before, if I’m in a crowded… or if I’m in a building, I try to listen for things like where are people walking to. Are there places that seem more open, echo-y than others. I mean, it’s got to be all by listening because I can’t, certainly can’t see anything.
Q. Right.
A. Uh… I don’t know. I mean guess I don't. I guess I just try to collect as much information as I can of whatever kind I can get. I don’t know if I think about it. I just do it.
Q. Have you used, do you use maps of any kind?
A. Uh, I used to look at maps a lot when I was a kid, but, I…you know, usually in most traveling…you don’t get to find maps that you can touch.
Q. Right.
A. So, I, I mean, I guess if somebody were to draw me the layout of, say, for instance, the streets of West Hartford, I would think that that's a really neat idea because…
Q. It’d be nice.
A. …I might be able to put some things together in a much clearer way than I do now. But, uh, now, I… Again, you know, it’s just back to accessibility. I mean, where do you find maps.
Q. Right.
A. So. I guess I would use them if they were there, but they’re not, so I don’t think about it much.
Q. Did you do it at all in your mobility…maps or…
A. Yeah, he did some of that. Um, mostly, though, what I remember us doing is walking places and making kind of a map that’s based on the things that you come to as you walk.
Q. Neat.
A. And a lot of description… I mean, he described a lot of stuff, you know. You know, this is a T-intersection here and off to the right is such-and-such. That was the other thing that he did a lot of on campus. You know, he would tell me where different buildings were and he’d say, I know you’re not going to go to this building, but, if you’re ever asking directions and somebody says it’s over near the Continuing Education center, at least you’ll have an idea of where it is.
Q. Neat.
A. So, you know, that was one of the cases where I learned to use something that might not have been directly useful but indirectly could be very helpful.
Q. Right.
A. And I try to do that today. I try to get those kind of landmarks so that, if somebody tells me where something is and it’s a, it’s a major landmark, I’ll have a clue as to where to what they're talking about.
Q. Can you use that as a reference.
A. Yeah.
Q. What one thing that happens frequently when you’re traveling that you like the least?
A. Hm. I think… One of the things that I, that… I’m just trying to think what. I mean there's a few things that really annoy me. One of them is, when I’m walking along and somebody will start to warn me about, oh, be careful there’s a, there's a signpost there, or there's a this, there's a that. And I when they do that, I find that I start to pay attention more to resisting what may or may not be useful warnings and then I end up missing cues because I’m not actually using the cane properly either.
Q. Right.
A. And I just want to… I find myself saying to people, look, you know, I have a cane and the reason I have it…
Q. [laugh]
A. …is to warn me about these things.
Q. [laugh]
A. If you try to anticipate what that’s doing, you’re not necessarily telling me anything useful. You may think you are, but you’re really not. And I guess that would probably be the think I like the least.
Q. What one thing that happens frequently… [laugh] I already asked you that… [laugh] What do you want sighted pedestrians to do when they want to help?
A. Well, uh, I think the thing that… If I wanted them to do just what would be the least that I require would be, for instance… If I’m standing on a corner waiting for a light to change, just tell me when the light’s really OK for me to go. ‘Cause these days it’s getting much harder than it used to be.
Q. Yeah.
A. You just don’t know any more what the patterns are, uh, with right turn on red, which is something I absolute hate.
Q. Hm.
A. Ah, it’s, you know, it used to be that, if you were standing at a light and you heard cars moving from left to right, you knew you shouldn’t go, but if they were moving from front to back, it was OK. Now you don’t know whether it’s OK any more.
Q. Yeah.
A. So, really, the biggest help that sighted people can be is to tell me when the light changes. And they don’t necessarily have to walk me across the street. Although, I won’t refuse that out of hand because sometimes, especially if it’s, if there’s really a lot of traffic, it may be easier…you know, if they can see a break in the traffic, otherwise I might be waiting for another ten minutes.
Q. Right.
A. But, you know, that’s, that’s the big one, I think. And I guess if I had to put that in another group of things I least like about traveling it’s trying to figure out the way the lights are working.
Q. Yeah.
A. ‘Cause it’s just no the way it used to be.
Q. Are you familiar with the term “actuated intersection”?
A. I’m not sure I… Oh, is that the…is that one of the ones where the light only… Is that the kind of thing where you have to push the button to get across?
Q. Yeah. And the cars also can shut it off.
A. Oh, yeah.
Q. But it’s not on a set pattern anymore.
A. That’s the problem. You push the button, and you don’t really know… I mean, my thing now is I’m always saying, gee, I don’t hear any traffic now. Does that mean that the light is really in my favor or does it mean that, for some reason, known to who knows who…
Q. Hm.
A. …that there just doesn’t happen to be ay traffic
right now?
Q. Right.
A. I spent a long time debating that and now, I’m kind of getting to the point where, if I don’t hear any traffic, I just simply go. Because I can’t… And I’ve gotten yelled at by people. You know, you didn’t have the light. Well, yeah.
Q. [laugh]
A. I know. What did you want me to do here? I mean I have no way of telling.
Q. [laugh]
A. I realize it’s probably not idea, but, you know…
Q. Well, I mean, crossing in a lull is absolutely an option, but it’s not usually taken up at at lighted intersection. But, again…
A. Yeah.
Q. …sounds like it makes sense to me. If you can determine it’s a lull, then why not?
A. Yeah. Because I mean…
Q. That’s what anyone else would do.
A. And, if you don’t, I mean, you could wait ten minutes for the next lull.
Q. Right, right.
A. And go through 15 light cycles.
Q. Um hm.
A. And still not, um… Obviously, that gets more difficult if you’ve got a lot of wind or wind and rain, you know. And then, there’s… Again, where I’m really grateful for anybody to tell me that I’ve really got the light. But, see, I had a lot of practice of crossing under adverse conditions like that, when I was at U-Conn, because Storrs is a very windy campus and I just had to learn to do it. There weren’t a whole lot of lights.
Q. Yeah.
A. So, you know… And maybe I’m lucky in that I started out… My formative years in traveling I was doing all the wrong things, so, you know, I didn’t have the luxury of saying, well, I’m only going to wait until the light’s green because a lot of the places where I was crossing, there weren’t any lights.
Q. Good deal.
A. Green or otherwise.
Q. How do you handle being lost or disoriented?
A. Well, I guess it depends on how badly disoriented I am. Um, I guess my first strategy is to try to pick up as much information as I can from just listening from things in the environment. Uh, but if I find that that’s not working, I usually hope somebody comes along and asks… And, I’ll, you know, ask directions.
Q. What kind…
A. I’m different than I used to be in my younger days. I would have been more (inaudible).
Q. Do you think that has… Just because you just didn’t like the idea of depending on others, or was that…
A. Yeah. I think I had more to prove then. I had to prove to myself…that I was as capable of mobility as the next person. Now, it’s kind of more that, well, look, I know that. I don’t have to prove it to anybody. So, rather than do that, I’ll just… You know, you spend a lot of times when you’re younger, doing things the hard way.
Q. [laugh] So true.
A. I think as you get older, you get tired of doing that. It’s really silly.
Q. What kinds of things do you use as landmarks?
A. Anything that I find. [laugh]
Q. Like what?
A. Well, sometimes I’ll use gradation in the sidewalk. Uh, I’ll use, uh, I don’t know what they call them…storm sewers. Uh, driveways. Uh, streets, if I’m walking along the side of a road. If there’s a… Well, one of the ones I use around here… Just past my driveway there’s a serious drop off from the sidewalk and I always use that to let myself know that I’ve gotten past my driveway. Um, we have wind chimes on the front of our
house and, if the wind is blowing and I hear them, then I don’t have to worry about the other landmarks because I know where I am.
Q. Neat.
A. So, I mean, I guess it’s really just anything I can find.
Q. Have you ever been injured when traveling?
A. Yeah, I fell in a swimming pool once.
Q. Oh, did you really?
A. Yeah.
Q. Was here water in it?
A. Nope.
Q. Oh, gosh.
A. Fortunately, it was only three feet deep and…
Q. Oh, gosh.
A. …it was winter, but this was one of those nights when I had been visiting with a friend of mine up in back of our house and I set off to go home and I thought I was walking home except that it turned out that I had walked into the next neighbor’s yard. You know, there was a lot of snow on the ground.
Q. Right.
A. All the landmarks were gone
Q. Hm.
A. And the next thing I knew, I was at the bottom of the swimming pool. [laugh]. I got out of there and came home and I had this nice little bloody gash on my head.
Q. Oh, gosh.
A. You know, I was more mad that anything else. I wasn’t really hurt, just annoyed and embarrassed. But…
Q. Had you been drinking? [laugh]
A. For the most part, I haven’t gotten injured.
Q. Is there anything that you would pass along for snow travel…as a tip?
A. Well, that’s a tough one, because, you know… Snow is kind of… Somebody once said that snow is the blind man’s fog.
Q. Yeah.
A. And I really is because it obscures everything.
Q. Yeah.
A. I do know this, that… That night that I walked home in a snowstorm where the sidewalks covered
up…
Q. Um hm.
A. …I found it easier to walk along the edge of the street because at least I had a definite curb.
Q. Yeah.
A. That wasn’t obscured. So, again, I mean, you just have to go with whatever you find.
Q. And I can imagine parked cars might be a similar kind of thing.
A. Yeah.
Q. You could, if they were there…
A. Oh, yeah, if they were there, I would have used them. I definitely would have. Although that night and on that particular road, there were no parked
cars.
Q. Right.
A. No, Nothing.
Q. Ay yie, yie.
A. So, it was just the curb. But I was really grateful that it was there. Even though I said, You know, somebody, somewhere is probably giving me hell for not being on the
sidewalk here, but…
Q. Well, they can go to heck. [laugh]
A. Yeah, I mean, it was four in the morning…
Q. [laugh] Give me a break.
A. I was interested in getting home.
Q. What about taxis? I didn’t ask you, but, um, in terms of the control and the money or anything…strategies that work well for you.
A. Well, again, I always try to know where I’m going or where, generally… At least how to get there the shortest way, although that’s not always possible to do.
Q. Um hm.
A. One of my biggest reasons for using taxis is, especially if there’s a place that you have to get to and you don’t want to spend a lot of time horsing around, you know, it’s much cheaper to take the bus. But, when you take the bus, you may get off at a stop that’s nowhere near where you want to be and you have to figure out how to get there and you may not always be able to do that. So, I use taxis to get places that I really have to be at and I don’t have the guarantee that I would get there otherwise. So.
Q. So, you found knowing as much as you can about how they should get there is a good one.
A. Yeah, because sometimes, uh, taxi drivers will take what may be simplest route but not always the shortest.
Q. Ah. [laugh]
A. And it can cost you quite a bit of difference. I mean, I, I remember one time we came home… Well, we went to a friend’s house and we went by the back road and when we came home, they took the highway which may be an easier way but it cost $20 instead of $12.
Q. Uh.
A. So, you want to be careful about stuff like that. I wasn’t that the guy was ripping me off. I mean, he didn’t…
Q. He didn’t know the other way.
A. Well, he just assumed that it was… He said take, you know, he said, take the highway? And I didn’t know any better at the time, and I said well yeah I guess. You know, and he wasn’t about to tell me which way was the shorter.
Q. Right.
A. But, if I had known, I would have said, no, don’t take the highway.
Q. Well, we learn, don’t we?
A. And, you know, you try to… I mean you're never going to… You’re never going to avoid completely getting ripped off or getting, you know, it, doing it wrong… I mean, you just have to learn these things.
Q. Neat.
A. We all do. Sighted people do, too. They don’t know how to do everything right, either.
Q. I’m here [laugh] I’m here to attest to that one.
A. Yeah, but I mean.
Q. [laugh] Still making mistakes, thank you very much.
A. But I think sometimes as a blind person you you kind of get the idea that you either better do it exactly right or not at all.
Q. Yeah.
A. And, life just doesn’t work that way.
Q. Right.
A. Nobody can do that. But you, you… I guess we all have to be good at thinking on our feet.
Q. That’s great. That’s great.
A. Take information and process it quickly.
Q. Do you belong to any professional or consumer organizations?
A. Uh, well, I’m a member of the American Council of the Blind, which is a consumer organization and, of course, our local affiliate, the Connecticut Council. Uh, professionally, no, I haven’t. I’m really not.
Q. What do you do at the Council?
A. Well, uh, I’m in charge of their newsletter.
Q. Neat.
A. Actually, kind of a lot of other things. My wife and I joke about that all the time sometimes we both feel like we just run the whole thing. It’s not quite true but it feels that way sometimes.
Q. Yeah.
A. You get, you know, five or six active people in an organization and, you know, the other 40 are just kind of sitting there, allowing themselves to be pushed on the wagon.
Q. [laugh] Hopefully paying their dues. [laugh]
A. Well, yes, that they do, but, you know…
Q. Yeah, you’d like people to be more active.
A. It would be nice if you had a few more people.
Q. Yeah. What do you think is the biggest, or, I don’t know if you want to speak on this, is he biggest rift or the biggest separation between ACB and NFB?
A. Well, I look at ACB as it’s more a collection of people whose philosophy it is, look, we’re doing the jobs that we have in the real world. We’re trying to do them as successfully as we can. Uh, you know, if we can use advocacy and legislation to get them to help us to do that, that’s fine. But we’re not going to go out of our way to grandstand and find issues and causes to fight.
Q. Um hm.
A. Because, our real cause is just, you know, making it in this world.
Q. Neat.
A.Whereas I think NFB tends to get much more into the finding or issues, you know, things that will make them highly visible in the media, uh, and… I don’t know.
Q. Neat.
A. I admire some of their techniques because they certainly have the ability to mobilize tremendously.
Q. Sure, absolutely. They are really
A. On the other hand, I also… One of my favorite unofficial names for them is the Noisy Fussing Blind.
Q. Oh, that’s terrible. [laugh]
A. Because just think that they spend entirely too much… I mean, to devote tons and tons of resources, screaming and yelling about blind people having the right to sit in exit seats on an airplane.
Q. Oh, really. I didn’t know that was one of theirs.
A. Oh, yeah, they went crazy over that.
Q. Oh, wow.
A. And, I mean, I would like to be… To me, the issue is… I would like to think that if I got on a plane, somebody would say to me, look, do you feel that you can handle sitting in an exit seat, given the fact that this is what you’re going to have to do if we have to bail out. But, beyond that, I don’t want, necessarily, to sit in an exit seat because I’m not sure I could be entrusted with that responsibility.
Q. Yeah.
A. You know. And I don’t have to prove anything to anybody by taking up a position on that. I just think there are more important things to get caught up in.
Q. Neat.
A. I’d rather have people respect me for the job that I do at work than to look at me and say, there’s a guy who could really sit in an exit seat.
Q. [laugh]
A. It doesn’t make any sense. And I just… You know Sometimes I think that the stands that NFB has historically taken do as much damage as they do
help.
Q. Yeah.
A. Because they polarize people to get them…. Remember I said before that I thought railroad personnel used to be a lot more helpful that they are now?
Q. Yeah.
A. Well, one of the reasons is that they’ve gotten yelled at by some of the more militant types of the NFB. They don’t need any help.
Q. Oh.
A. Leave us alone. Now, you know, you may get your independence that way, but you may also, you know, you may also cause people to turn away who really could be a help if you just explained to them what you need.
Q. Right.
A. Or, you know, a little courtesy, a little of, no thanks, I’m fine. Instead of, Goddammit, leave me alone.
Q. Yeah.
A. There’s a different way of doing things.
Q. How did ADA impact you? Do you notice a difference before and after its passage?
A. Uh [laugh] I was almost going to give you a real flippant answer here.
Q. [laugh] Those are accepted, too. [laugh]
A. Actually, I was just going to say, yeah, I’m a lot deafer that I used to…from all the noise.
Q.[laugh]
A. On a…
Q. I don’t get that one, it went right over my head.
A. It’s just that everybody’s making so much noise about ADA now, and I’m not sure if it’s really…
Q. Oh.
A. I mean, it’s nice that we have it.
Q. Un huh.
A. But, I don’t think that, just because we have it, I don’t think that’s what changing my life. Uh, I think… I think it’s up to each one of us to find ways to make life more accessible to us if we can. It’s nice to have the backing that says, you know, the law’s on your side if you need to make a case out of it. But, I think we adapt to things, not because the government passes a law that says you will level the playing field because we get creative.
Q. Yeah.
A. You know, you think of the number of electrical appliances these days that are just not easy to operate for a blind person.
Q. Yeah.
A. And, if you’re going to survive, you better figure out ways to do it. I mean, some of that stuff is not covered in the
manual.
Q. Right.
A. And, and maybe it’s not different for anybody. I mean, I guess sighted people have an easier time because there’s a lot of things that we do that are geared to people who can see, but you still have to use your head. You have able to think and I think, ultimately, that’s what’s going to make life better for anybody. It’s your own ability to learn what you have to learn…not a loss of something. You will make this more accessible to me. I think it’s has some impact but I’m not sure that it’s the be all and end all.
Q. So you personally have not really, I mean… I wonder that, too. Is it really just this person notices this or that.
A. Yeah, I mean, it hasn’t made great changes in my life. I mean, I was making things accessible for myself long before there was ADA and I’ll probably be doing it if they repeal it.
Q. Yeah.
A. Which I don’t think they will, but…
Q. Neat.
A. No, personally I don’t think it’s… I think it’s good that we have it, but I’m not looking for it to be my savior.
Q. Would you get more mobility instruction?
A. I don’t know. Uh, I guess… Well [laugh] I guess it says something that I’ve moved to several different locations and I never have.
Q. Neat.
A. There were times when I’ve thought it would be nice to call up a mobility instructor and say, hey, look, you know… Could we walk around the streets of West Hartford here just so I can get a little better idea of what’s what. But, I’ve never done it, so, you know.
Q. Like what? What do you mean, what’s what?
A. Well, I mean, it would be nice to have a real clear picture of where everything actually was.
Q. Yeah.
A. But, if I don’t, I guess I can get where I have to go. I mean I’ve done it.
Q. Yeah.
A. I’ve been doing it for years. I don’t know. I guess if somebody… If in the mobility instructor’s lotto I won the prize, I guess I’d take it.
Q. [laugh] OK [laugh]
A. I mean, gee…
Q. OK. What do you think about blind mobility instructors?
A. Well, uh, I know that, when I was at U-Conn, I
helped a lot of kids learned the campus.
Q. Neat.
A. Um, I don’t know that I would want to force the issue and say I would only accept a blind mobility instructor. I think a good sighted mobility instructor can do some things that would be awful hard for a blind one to do, which is to say, quickly learn new places that you've never been. I mean, the reason that I could do that on U-Conn’s campus was because I’d been there so long.
Q. Um hm.
A. And I’m sure that I was able to teach them things in a way that other people didn’t. I also think that if, you know, there were good, sighted mobility instructors, that would work, too. So, I wouldn’t want to make an issue of it just for blindness and there are some blind people I would hope they’d never become mobility instructors. Because I don’t think they could do it that well.
Q. Well. You know, then they are some people who should never be computer programmers either.
A. Well, that’s right.
Q. So I think your point is well taken.
A. Yeah.
Q. Yeah, absolutely.
A. I don’t like to get into the, you know, we need more blind such-and-such. No, we need more qualified whatever we get.
Q. I like that. That sits well with me and I agree.
A. Whatever it is… I mean, I think we’ve done too much of that in the United States.
Q. Well, I think in our teeny little world of blindness, we’ve done a lot more of that than we need to. [laugh]
A. And I don’t think it’s been real good, either.
Q. Segment, and make people form allegiances that really shouldn’t…that people shouldn’t have to form. You know it should be a matter of choice.
A. Yeah.
Q. Option, what have you. I mean…
A. I’d like to think that whatever I do in this life, people think of the job that I do rather than the fact that I was a blind person doing it.
Q. Yeah. Well, I really appreciate you taking this time to talk to me.
A. It’s quite all right. I hope this is some help.
Q. Oh, it has been. You’ve just been… Your insight into your mobility instruction has been very, very nice to listen to and clear and you just have interesting memories from…and what you brought to it. So, it’s just terrific.
A. I’m glad I got a chance to do this. I mean, it sounded interesting when Dave Goldstein mentioned it to me and I told him, yeah, get this lady for me.
Q. Neat. Well, I wonder if you might recommend anyone to me.
A. Well, let me think, well you caught me off guard here.
Q. Well, we have each other’s e-mail here, so, you know…
A. OK.
Q. …you don’t have to do it right away.
A. Let me thing on it a little bit.
Q. I’m looking for employed adults who are visually
impaired.
A. OK. Yeah. I’ll do that. Yeah. Let me think about that a little bit.
Q. Super.
A. And I will make use of the e-mail.
Q. Thanks a lot.
A. OK, Grace.
Q. It was good talking to you.
A. Good to talk to you, too. And good luck in your
work.
Q. Thanks very much. Good night.
A. Good night.
Steve remembers having a great deal of independence in his years growing up before O&M instruction and acquiring the skills he needed to move further afield as a teenager seeking to travel further from home. He has shared many great insights into the difficulties experienced of moving about day to day before the advent of the smart phone – so many folks should be really mindful of the importance of getting children born blind access to smart phones – specifically iPhones as early as possible.
In high school, Steve had to be convinced to swing the long cane back and forth in front of him before that He relied on his feet – long toes. His resilience is remarkable, and he beat the odds. He was ready and able to benefit from the long cane and O&M instruction once he began in high school. He went on to live a rich life married and well respected in his field. Research on his generation of learners born blind showed him to be an exception- most children born blind grew up unable to benefit from O&M instruction so late in life and that is why it became essential to begin providing O&M instruction as part of early intervention. Even then it hasn’t be as effective until the advent of the pediatric belt cane.
