Sighted Guide

I went to school with my daughter this morning to attend her orientation and mobility lesson with Mr. Adam.   He goes to the various schools in the area that have VI students and spends an hour with each one of them per week.  He’s taught my daughter how to use her cane effectively,  but that’s only the start of what he’s teaching her.

They go on field trips most weeks to some location close to the school.  They have been planning a trip to the pet store, what with my daughter wanting to work in one when she gets older, but we didn’t have the time today so we went to Wendy’s instead which was just a few blocks away.

We drove over and parked at the pharmacy at one end of the shopping strip.   The Wendy’s was at the other end and out of sight from where we parked.   My daughter got out and oriented herself at the back of the car.   The next part was hard.  It was hard to get to Wendys.   It was hard, because she couldn’t see anything and didn’t know where it was.

To get there as a sighted person I would have seen it in the distance as we pulled in, walked around the pharmacy through the parking lot, curbs, avoiding the other cars.   Then I would have figured out the best way to traverse the parking lot space including the berms, curbs, parking  concrete space markers, shopping carts, lamp posts, entry way car paths, medians, etc. until I got to the restaurant where I would walk straight to the door, open it and go in.

But she’s blind and she knows none of this.   This is a good point to put in a plug for sighted guide dogs.   How do you tell a dog to take you to Wendy’s?  “Dog, go to Wendy’s” doesn’t work.   Or even if the dog knew how to get there from prior trips, what if you want to go to the Verison store in the same shopping area?  The dog can’t read and doesn’t know which store you mean if it’s someplace you’ve never been there before.  

That’s why you, as a blind person, have to be able to navigate successfully for yourself before you’re eligible to revive a guide dog.  The dog keeps you safe, it’s not an autonomous self-driving GPS creature.   So you have to learn how to get places yourself.

What we did, or rather what my daughter did, was get there using audio and sensory clues.  She knew that from the back of my car she needed to head towards the loudest vehicle sounds of quickly moving cars about fifteen cars away from the spot I’d parked and climb up a set of stairs to the sidewalk.   She couldn’t trail along the backs of the other cars to get to the curb because the parking lot was almost empty.   She had to keep walking straight and not trail off to the left or the right.   And that’s easy to do when you’re blindfolded from what I’ve experienced.

She got to the curb and heard the cars forwards and above her as the road was higher up.   She knew there was a flight of stairs to the right from prior trips.   She used cane techniques to climb the irregular paved stairs and then knew to turn left towards that loud traffic.   When her cane dropped off the edge of the curb (car sounds very loud and close now) she knew to turn left again and walk parallel with the traffic.

This was impressive to see her do and a bit scary because of what happened next.   She got to the pavement opening where the entry and exit ways of the shopping strip.   She waited to hear for cars coming into or out and then moved forward.  She made it to the center concrete island between the lanes fine but the second half of the pavement she unknowingly veered to the right, missing the edge of the sidewalk and started moving into the street.

This is where a guide dog would be useful because the dog would have kept her on path, even if the dog didn’t know where specifically she was ultimately headed.  She was never in danger because Mr. Adam had her stop and assess what had happened.   After that the rest of the walk was much the same, save for I don’t know how in the world she’d know where she was going unless she’d been there before, via that same route (which in this case, she had.)

We got to the Wendy’s parking lot and via some audio cues and, apparently, she could see where the building was (which I didn’t know she could see), she headed to the door.   That’s another thing I don’t know how you’d know without help—you’re at a busy fast food restaurant with cars all over the place, including the drive through cars circling around the building.  Where is the door?   You can’t walk all around the building until you find a door handle.  

When we got there the building was locked.  So what do you do now?  I could see the store hours that showed they didn’t open until ten (we were five minutes early).   I could look inside and see someone preparing to open the store.  If you’re blind do you just wait, hopeful that there isn’t a sign taped to the inside of the door saying, “water main broken, closed until flood damage can be repaired”?

In this case, we waited for five minutes and then all had Frosties before heading back to school.   That was the best part of the trip for my daughter.   Here’s a map of the path she took.   The place where the red line breaks is where she veered off into the street.



I learned a lot about “sighted guide” today as well.   The term, “sighted guide” describes when a sighted person guides a blind person around.   I’ve been doing this, but I needed some more formal training.  The beginning was funny as my daughter grasped my wrist and I started walking forward with her.  She was using her cane as well.   After a bit Mr. Adam said, “what she’s doing is something called ‘untrusted sighted guide’”.   I laughed because I thought his meant my daughter didn’t trust me.

It didn’t though, she just hadn’t stopped using her cane.   A trusted sighted guide is someone who knows how to safely guide a blind person, unlike, say some of my daughter’s friends who will gladly grab her hand and drag her along with them, not realizing she might trip over a root or not see a curb. In those cases or when a blind person has to ask help from someone who is unknown to them, the blind person would still use their cane to give them the additional information.  

In trusted sighted guide the blind person would tuck their cane up against their body and let the sighted person lead.   There are lots of rules for how to do this safely given different situations like opening doors, traversing narrow spaces and finding stadium seats.   I learned the basics today.

The Big Boy Update:  My son told Liz today he was done with OT until August.  Liz said she’d talk to me about that.   He’s almost correct though with all the travel Liz and we have over the summer.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter got shy (anxious) when I got to school today with Mr. Adam.  She wasn’t so sure she wanted to have me there I think.   She warmed up to it though when she realized she was going to get a Frostie at Wendy’s.