Map Quest

A faculty friend of mine invited me to come speak to his Intro to Special Education class this week about my history of academic accomodations and dog guides. At first he asked me if I could talk about dog guides in his class for fifteen minutes and i had to laugh. I could probably talk about that topic for about fifteen HOURS. But we eventually narrowed it down to my academic history of accomodations, my mobility before Prada, and how Prada has altered my lifestyle. Of course I ended up going a little over time, but he had made an allowance for that. The students were mainly interested in what my usable range of vision was, and Prada's training. One student, the guy that runs the front desk of my residence hall, approached me the day after the class on my way up to my room with another question. He remembered me saying that it was my job to tell Prada where to go, and her job to get me there safely. "So, how do you KNOW where to tell her to go?" he asked. Obviously i can't read street signs, so how would I know? Well, there are a few ways that visually impaired people navigate the world, and the techniques don't change too much from using a cane to walking with a dog.

You know how when you walk into a dark room and you can feel when it opens up a bit, or when you've left a dark hallway and entered a wider intersection of unlit hallways? The air feels different, it sounds different. "more open,' people like to say. Blind people are much more attuned to this. We use air current changes and how sounds change in differently-sized spaces to orient ourselves. It's kind of like a low-powered sonar. Outsiide, if we're walking next to a building line or along a wooded path we can feel and hear when the area opens up. We can feel the slight downward slope of a street corner, or the upward curve of a driveway. We use landmarks like these to keep ourselves on track. We also use very carefully constructed mental maps of our surrounding areas. It is necessary for us to memorize which streets intersect with each other and what kind of traffic control (light, sign, et cetera) graces the intersection with its presence.

When a sighted person gives directions it usually sounds like this; go left at the next light and then once you pass the WalMart on your right take a sharp right and then left at McDonald's. When a blind perosn gives directionis it will consist of numbers of blocks and cardinal or orientation directions. "Go four blocks down Main, then at Main turn right and go three blocks. Cross the parallel street at the end of the third block and continue straight away from the parallel until you reach the onramp to the bridge. Then turn left and go for a block and a half. On that second block take the second driveway up."

We talk a lot about routes when we give directions or talk about our daily routines. A route is a preplanned, often practiced set of directions that we use to get from point A to point B. We like to have these programmed plans of travel to maintain our orientation, and the more our normal routes intersect, the better picture of the area we have.