Like most adaptive techniques used by the vision-impaired, the solutions to seemingly complex challenges can be solved with some thought and a bit of courage. When I first learned to cross a street completely sightless, it challenged me in ways I hadn’t imagined.

My first day at blind class

My situation is a bit different from the regular students who attend the Blind Industries and Services of Maryland (BISM) located in Baltimore, Maryland. Unlike those full-time students who attend the school for job training and living skills instruction, I already had a full-time job that paid well and where I had a good future. The reason I was attending BISM was to improve my basic living skills so that I had even more options when it came to determining my future. There is always room for improvement.

Well, because I had a limited list of skills I wanted to brush up on, the school permitted me to attend for just 30 days instead of the full 9 months the other students were scheduled to attend.

On my list of blindness-skills, I wanted to improve on were Braille reading and writing, living skills which would teach me home management, and cane travel instruction. What I will talk about in this post are my many personal challenges encountered when relearning how to use a cane the right way.

My first challenge

When you are doing well in something, it is easy to assume that you don’t require any additional education. I had fallen into this trap. The reason I never felt challenged when I traveled alone was not that I was an accomplished traveler. But I subconsciously avoided the activities that made me feel uncomfortable. Therefore, my travel world was quite small.

If I thought to relearn cane travel skills was going to be easy, I was sorely wrong. The travel instructors at BISM are aware of how their students avoid putting themselves into uncomfortable situations when traveling. It is the instructor’s job to make the students better travelers. Which means, putting the students into situations that are new to them. I had no idea how uncomfortable I was going to be.

Discovering when old tools stop working

When you have some remaining vision, you use it. Believe me on this one. Learning how to do things with your remaining vision is okay. However, if you are currently vision-impaired, odds are that you are going to lose even more vision over time. And, those sight-dependent techniques you developed in the past, won’t be of any value anymore.

The problem with training a vision-impaired student how to cope with their current visual acuity is that each time the student’s vision changes, additional training will be required to adapt. Unfortunately, many training centers teach this way expecting their students to return again and again. This is not the teaching style at BISM.

To avoid the situation that students will return to their school over-and-over again each time their vision changes, the BISM instructors prefer to teach you once. They do this by encouraging their students to develop skills that are independent of sight. They achieve this by having each student with residual vision attend all their classes blindfolded. That way, students learn to depend on their other senses and their problem-solving skills.

To many of the instructors of the vision-impaired, this is hard-core. Many blindness training schools are more than happy to have students come-and-go through their doors—as many as six times in the case of one student I spoke to. This is inefficient and expensive.

The best solution is to teach once for a lifetime utilizing techniques that don’t depend on vision. Those were the skills I wanted.

I could talk for pages on what I learned during my short time there. Don’t worry, I won’t. The short version so far is that I was taught how to cross busy streets wearing a blindfold and carrying a cane.

Steps for crossing a busy street while totally blind

Listen: The most effective tool for crossing a busy street is your ears. When you listen, you can gather information like where the traffic is going, which direction it is flowing, and therefore, when it is safe to cross.

Wait: Rushing is for roadkill. Even if you must listen through several traffic cycles, it is better to be safe.

Be confident: When it is time to cross, being tentative while crossing a street confuses drivers. When you cross assertively, traffic will make way for you and you will be able to get out of traffic’s path much more quickly.

I would love to say that the first time I was instructed on how to cross a road blindfolded, I was able to do it the first time with complete confidence. I would be untruthful if I did. It was not like that at all. I had to walk up to that street several times before I would even step off a curb. That took about a week. However, with facing my fear and putting myself into a situation I would have avoided otherwise, I was able to cross the street with confidence and safety. In fact, after two weeks, the instructors had me teaching the new student arrivals how to cross.

Lots of lessons from this experience

Learning how to cross a street involved a lot more than just following a few rules. It involved putting myself into a situation I would have unconsciously avoided in the past. It involved learning how to tackle my problem in steps, building confidence and skill, as I progressed. And finally, it involved sharing my knowledge with others so that they can go beyond their barriers as I did.

If you know someone that I should connect with (it could be your boss or an event planner) someone who is looking for a public speaker for an upcoming event or conference, have them email me at John@JohnBaileySpeaker.com. You can also learn a whole lot more on my speaking by visiting https://www.JohnBaileySpeaker.com. Also, please feel free to share and post comments.