SHARON DUFFY TALKS ABOUT CANE TRAVEL

SHARON DUFFY TALKS ABOUT CANE TRAVEL

Future Reflections Fall 1991
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SHARON DUFFY TALKS ABOUT CANE TRAVEL

by Catherine Horn Randall

and Sharon Duffy

Editor's Note: This article was originally published in The Month's News, the

National Federation of the Blind of Illinois newsletter. Ms. Duffy is currently

employed at BLIND, Inc. of Minnesota, an orientation center for the blind.

The questions new students ask most often is "How long will it take for me

to become an efficient traveler?" Each student has individual needs, but on

average a student needs three travel lessons a week lasting for approximately

two hours a session for three months. I have had the occasional student who only

needed five or six lessons. These students knew their compass directions well

and were very confident in themselves from the beginning. These people just

needed basic cane techniques. In one case a student had maybe five or six

lessons and learned how to use a cane, how to travel in the downtown area, and

how to use the trains. She had a lot of motivation to travel.
I teach my students to really follow verbal directions. This is very

important. I don't use Braille maps much. I have shown a Braille map of the Loop

to two students; but chances are good that you will never have a Braille map to

follow. We talk about directions until a student really understands how to

follow them. If a student can repeat the route, that's a good sign; if he can

then go travel it, that's even better.

Many beginning students have to learn to deal with a lot of fear about

traveling. Some people hide it better than others, but I think everybody has

some real fear because you could conceivably be hit or killed. The greatest

fear, however, for most students-and the hardest one to deal with-is their fear

of making fools of themselves. High achievers who are used to doing most things

well find it hard to understand that most people goof up during travel lessons

from time to time.
I don't teach what are called pre-cane techniques. For example, I do not

teach students to trail walls; I actively discourage this because it looks

awful. It is anti-social behavior in this world. If a student is searching for a

specific door, for example, I teach the student to count doors using the cane. I

have instructed students to put one hand in a pocket to avoid trailing with that

hand.

I think that some of the people who advocate using pre-cane techniques are

the same people who would advocate putting your cane away inside buildings. I

encourage my students to carry and use their canes whenever they are inside a

building. When you are in your own house that's another matter, but if you are

walking around inside a building there isn't any reason you can't continue to

use your cane. It is the most efficient way to do things. So why learn pre-cane

techniques? It's foolish for a person who intends to use a cane to be bothered

with them.

The first thing I do during my first lesson with a new student is to give

him or her an appropriate cane and teach him how to use the basic touch

technique, and how to use the cane walking up and down stairs. What I want to do

is teach my students to have confidence through learning practical travel

skills.
I also discourage the use of hand rails while walking up and down stairs. I

had a very athletic male student who argued with me vehemently about this until

one day he was traveling the el system with a briefcase in one hand and his cane

in the other, and he saw my point exactly. There are so many situations when it

is not convenient to grab a hand-rail. Learning to negotiate stairs safely and

comfortably without using hand-rails is another way of building confidence.

The more a person uses his or her cane as a tool to judge the depth of

steps, the better that person will negotiate stairs. A good cane traveler can

tell when his cane drops even a half inch. That half-inch isn't much but it is

enough to possibly trip you.
I advocate that beginning students use a cane that is between 10 and 12

inches shorter than they are. Another way of saying this is to purchase a cane

that reaches from the floor to somewhere between your armpit and your nose. This

should be a comfortable length for you. As a student walks faster, he or she may

want a longer cane. I advocate the use of a longer cane more so than do many

travel teachers for several reasons. If you walk very fast at all and you are

using a cane that is too short, you will overstep your cane. In other words, you

will step beyond where your cane has touched. You will find that you step off

curbs without meaning to and you will run into things periodically. If you do

either of these things, your cane is too short or your cane technique is

inadequate. If you have long legs and a long stride you will definitely want a

cane that comes about to your nose.

I want to touch briefly upon the subject of collapsible canes. People have

asked me if it wouldn't be easier to use collapsible canes for people who get in

and out of cars a lot. I answer that no collapsible cane is as good a tool as a

long fiberglass cane. They aren't as sensitive, they do tend to shake apart, and

it doesn't take much to bend one of the pieces of a collapsible cane. Also, the

cords that hold them together tend to break. In the case of telescopic canes,

they tend to telescope unexpectedly, leaving the user suddenly unprotected in

mid-stride. The nylon tips on collapsible canes do not slide easily. Once they

are worn even a little bit they start catching in cracks, whereas a metal tip

will slide over cracks. Nylon cane tips can be terrible to try to replace. We

have had people come into The Guild and try to figure out how to take the cane

apart in order to replace the tip, and they have given up and bought a new cane.

I recommend the NFB II cane, which is a hollow fiberglass cane. There is one

simple trick to replacing the metal tip of this cane that I would like to pass

along to you. Put the new tip under hot water to soften the rubber portion of

the cane tip. The new tip then slides into place easily covering the screw on

the bottom of the cane.

To sum up my feelings about teaching cane travel, I design all travel

lessons to teach my students confidence in the best and fastest ways I know how.

I am always thinking toward the time my students will be traveling on their

own. This is why I teach compass directions and why I insist they learn how to

ask for, and follow, verbal directions. A blind person who has learned to ask

for specific directions and then can follow them can travel anywhere, including

places he has never been before. Sometimes good travelers get lost, but they

eventually figure out how to get to their destinations.
We teach Philosophy of Blindness classes at The Guild. I think it is very

difficult to teach a person who really doesn't believe it is okay to be blind

and have him get out on the street and do a good job traveling. Attitude has as

much to do with the success of a cane travel student as any other single factor.

The confidence people gain as their travel skills improve seems to radiate

out into many other aspects of their lives. They begin doing other things that

they hadn't considered doing, such as cooking or living independently. As

students get to know other blind people who live successful lives, they want to

try as well, and they do succeed.

Learning skills of blindness and learning confidence do go hand-in-hand. If

you have to pick between the two, confidence is by far the better thing to have.

I know blind people who had no training in skills of blindness, but had

confidence in themselves. These people got to know other blind people who travel

and live fulfilled lives and decided, by example, "why not me, too," and went

out and got back into life. On the other hand, I also know blind people who had

travel training from "expert peripatologists" but did not develop any

self-confidence from that training. These people stay home and never use the

skills they were taught because they were never encouraged to believe in

themselves.

In addition to confidence and skills of blindness we need to know how to

cope with public attitudes about blindness. We need to understand how to handle

and educate the well-meaning person on the corner who grabs us, because this is

a common problem. I wish I could do more to help my students cope with a

negative family environment, for such an environment is very detrimental to the

kind of training I am able to give. A student has to have some motivation and

some belief in himself or skills training is not of any particular value.
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