Of Satellites and the Super Blind

Of Satellites and the Super Blind

Future Reflections Summer 1990, Vol. 9 No. 2
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OF SATELLITES AND THE
SUPER BLIND
by Chip Johnson
[PICTURE] Chip Johnson, Illinois.
Editor's Note: This article is reprinted from The
Braille Examiner, a publication of the NFB of
Illinois.
In these days of ever more complex technology,
consumers are continually bombarded with
"new" and "better" ways of doing things, and we
the blind are no exception. In recent years, we
have seen the advent of the Kurzweil reader,
computer speech technology and a myriad of
other such "breakthroughs". We cannot deny that
some of this equipment truly does make our lives
easier. This article is in fact being written on an
IBM PC clone with speech technology which
allows me to produce, edit, and print a document
without the help of a reader. We must, however,
remember that such technology is not the
panacea that many of the sighted (and for that
matter, the blind) think it to be. In most cases, the
tried-and-true alternative techniques that the
blind have used for years work just as well.
Last Fall, I got a call from Jan Floyd, director of the "Services for Sensory Impaired" office at the
University of Illinois --for those of you "unenlightened
souls" out there who aren't fluent in
rehabese, that's the office which deals with the
blind and deaf--asking me to participate in a
graduate research project involving travel aids
for the blind (pause for collective groan). My first
reaction was to dismiss this project as just another
attempt to throw technology at a nonexistent
problem. However after careful consideration, I
decided that my participation in such a project
might afford me an opportunity to educate the
graduate student and to remove some of the
mystery and fear from his perception of blindness.
On
the appointed day, I was asked to travel a
prescribed route and later discuss the trip with
the researcher. I naturally had no difficulty
traveling the route using only my long white cane.
After the walk the grad student questioned me
about the trip. "Did I have any difficulty with the
route?" I told him that I did not. He then explained
the project, which involved the use of
satellite tracking technology to aid the blind
traveler. A system had been designed whereby
the blind person would carry a "compact" (about
the size of a large backpack) satellite receiver
which would pick up coordinates from an orbiting
satellite and convert them to standard measurements
of distance from a particular destination.
The traveler would decide where he/she
wanted to go and program the coordinates of that
location into the machine. He would then begin
walking in a random direction, checking his coordinates
periodically until he reached the desired
location (and you thought all you needed to
travel competently was a white cane and common
sense).
One's first reaction is to laugh off such a project
as just another misguided effort to "help the
blind." However, if we strip away the space-age
veneer, we find the same destructive attitudes
which have kept the blind from achieving full first
class status since the beginning of time. Obviously,
this researcher believes (probably unconsciously)
that the blind traveler's world is a dark
and mysterious place in which the blind person
picks his way along unsure of every step with little
if any idea where he is going.We in the National
Federation of the Blind know that with proper
training in the use of the long white cane, a blind
person can travel as competently as his sighted
neighbors.
Upon learning that I had no difficulty traveling
the route given me, the researcher took another
old familiar tack: implying that I was an especially
good traveler and that other travelers who are not
so adept might put his machine to good use. I
politely told him that I am not a particularly
outstanding traveler and that his invention would
actually encourage blind people to become dependent
on the very machine designed to give
them independence. I also noted that the device
does not give the same useful information about
landmarks that a long, white cane provides.
Thus, the only way a blind person would know he
had arrived at his destination is according to the
coordinates from the machine. He then speculated
that the device might be useful in unfamiliar
areas, but I noted that without precise
coordinates for a particular location, the machine
would be useless. He seemed less than thrilled
with these remarks, and the interview soon
ended, but not before I suggested that he apply
his inventiveness in the design of a more practical
idea like a compact campus map similar to those
which newly arriving sighted students carry. I'm
sure that if this idea is considered at all, it will
probably be shelved in favor of a more complex
(if less useful) project.
After some reflection on my participation in the
study, I know that my input probably didn't make
much difference in the overall scheme of things,
but if I changed (even slightly) that graduate
student's attitude toward blindness, it was well
worth the effort.
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