Category: the Rant Board
Please tell me I'm not, (because I know I'm not), the only blind person to find it extremely frustrating to walk a straight line in, say, a parking lot or while crossing a quiet street with no traffic. I've been to a training center for six months, been walking places my entire life, but still this seemingly simple task seems to be lost on me, and hearing someone tell me I'm veering to the left or right just makes me want to find large, heavy objects and throw them through a window. I can walk along a sidewalk, memorize routes, and generally travel reasonably well for someone who spent a lot of time in the middle of nowhere getting driven everywhere. However, if I'm told to turn into a parking lot, go straight across it and find the door, I generally end up somewhere quite far from said door, if the parking lot is even slightly large. It seems as though I need some kind of audible reference to stay straight. I've thought several times that an iPhone app with an audible stereo tone would be nice, but that doesn't solve everything.
I'm prepared to face the fact that there are just certain things blind people can't do, but ... not this.
Any thoughts, suggestions, further rantings or arguments are definitely welcomed. I started this topic partially to see who would post back and start a discussion, and partially because it's one of my simpler frustrations and ... well, this is the rant board, where I can rant about anything and everything within reason. I'll be interested to see what shows up here.
Thanks for listening.
I feel your pain. it's hard to stay straight with no audio queues to guide you, you're not alone. the only advice I can offer is to listen for any audio clues. Maybe you hear the door opening, maybe you listen to where cars are and judge your path based on their position. I don't know, because I generally don't wander across parking lots, but just listening very carefully to cars around you might be a start. I'd also be interested to hear what others have to say.
I used to suffer from this, but my dog has mostly negated it. However, when I used a cane, I had a few methods that would help. First, its a lot harder to aim for a door, than it is to aim for an entire building. If you aim for just the building, then trail along the building to find the door, you're a lot less likely to get lost. That's what I always did.
However, if that isn't good enough, you can employ the roll step. if you take small steps, precisely placing your heel, and aiming your toe in the direction you want to go before rolling up to your toe for the next step, it is much easy to go in a straight line. its basically marching to where you want to go. It looks kinda dumb, but if you want to go straight, that's the way to go. The longer steps you take, the more likely you are to veer to one way or the other. Take small steps and its easier.
Hope that helps.
I understand your frustration. Big parking lots and other types of large open spaces are hard to deal with, but you can. The above posters are right. Any kind of audio cues are good ones. Aiming for the building in general, rather than just trying to find the door. Listening to where cars are, not just the ones that are running, but parked ones as well. Often they'll have a pattern. Echo location is your friend in open spaces. Never heard of the roll step Cody described, but I might try that next time I'm dealing with something like this.
I also have a lot of trouble with this. I thik that part of my problem is that I used to have pretty good sight and was able to travel independently without a cane or sighted guide. Now that I am totally blind, I hate traveling alone. I not only have trouble traveling in a straight line across a parking lot, for example, but noises can throw me off. I can't always tell which direction a noise is coming from, and that can cause confusion when traveling. This is something that wouldn't have been a problem when I could see.
I don't have a lot of experience walking through parking lots yet, but I too have trouble walking in a straight line when crossing a street. An audible signal helps a lot but I tend to veer a little when crossing streets without one. I don't have as much trouble with it as I used to but it can still be frustrating at times lol.
OK again I am going to be perfectly hardball honest here, so if you work for a institution or are into the idealism shit, you're gonna have to suck it up and deal or skip this post:
I took many a beat-down as a kid for not walking straight.
But, post 1, you ever heard of people getting lost in blizzards? in deserts? In the open ocean (without proper navigational aids)?
Guess what, sport, they're all sighted.
Nobody walks in a straight line, and I do mean nobody. Even an automobile on a straight highway, one that visually looks straight, for many reasons has to be constantly guided to keep a straight path. What looks like a straight line is just conformity to the curvature of the earth where you're at. The physyics of this is so simple these beat-down platitudinal types really should be wards of the state themselves if they don't get it.
So, then, how do we compensate? Well how do anybody compensate? Points of reference. That's it. Those people who shut their eyes and walk fifteen steps and tell you, "See? I just walked in a straight line," are full of shit and probably know it, or should be wards of the state themselves for not having the basic sensibility to not know it. In that fifteen steps they actually veered, albeit microscopically, but an angle is an angle, and the proportions just get bigger with distance. Again, 8th-grade math and science, if they passed those, would actually tell them this very basic thing.
So you, or I, when addressing a parking lot, have a couple options:
If what you want is a building across it, aim yourself at it like it's a target and make like hell towards it. The inertia of fast movements will keep you relatively straight and the sound coming off the building will be your target, the blind eequivalent to a motorist following the yellow line, "straight" along that winding road that runs "straight" at a 15-degree angle across town.
Oh, and if there is no real reference point either in parallel or perpendicular, aim yourself at the direction you need to go, and again, make like a bat outa hell. Again, you will veer some, but if all you want is across, you'll get there, and if moving at a good clip, possible about 5 degrees to either side of where you directly wanted, but all you wanted was to get across. Just remember the only way anybody gets around anywhere is via points of reference. The deserts are littered with the carcasses of the dead who had no points of reference, who wandered about aimlessly and died without them. People die in blizzards with no point of reference, a few feet from their houses, of exposure.
You can't be so-called trained to go straight. None of that shit works. It's all in your use of reference points, the only difference being we have to be a bit more deliberate about it. But, there are places where sighted people have to as well, like on the water. Trust me: out there, they can wander and veer far more radically than the worst horror story fiction made up by the beat-down institutional types who apparently never made it through eighth-grade science.
The times I've run into one of them imbeciles as an adult, who asks where I got such 'good training' I simply tell them it's all in using points of reference and inertia, no more and no less. Then they are the ones aimlessly wandering off, possibly in search of a dictionary to look up the word inertia, if they know how to do that.
Just remember any sound, any sort of natural or artificial change in your environment, that's your equivalent of the yellow line, which will take you 'straight' along that road running a 15-degree angle across town.
Any one of us can run tinto no end of frustration, say, when the wind is blowing sound all over the place, when there's intense fogs, or deep snows, or acres of parking lot with no intermittent speed bumps or other terrain characteristics to give you a reference pointer.
You know what? The shit I'm describing here birds use during their intercontinental migrations: so boys and girls, birds have something figured out that people paid for by your institutions and your tax dollars have not. Fancy that, kids.
Wow. I'm ctually surprised at the number of responses this has gotten, but I think it's a good thing.
I definitely appreciate all your suggestions. I've noticed myself, subconsciously even, speeding up when crossing a street. If I think about it, that's when I seem to not manage to go straight. If I just go across, especially with traffic, carefully placing my feet but not going slowly, it does seem to help. I'll have to try alining my feet deliberately though, to see what happens. I don't really care if I look weird as long as I can manage to make it somewhere, most of the time, with some degree of efficiency.
LeoGuardian, I have to say, I don't know you but I like the way you write. I've seen it both in quicknotes and here. And you're absolutely right, of course. Nobody can walk, drive, swim or fly 100% straight.
I suppose this will only come with practice.
During the day, if you can feel the sun on one side of you and try to maintain that, that can be helpful.
The other day I was extremely drunk, and I walked down to the store in the middle of the night to get some cigarettes.
I walked back home, and I realized after a couple minutes that I was wandering around aimlessly in the parking lot of my apartment complex.
After I got done cackling madly at the shittyness of my plight, I stopped, had a smoke, turned around a couple times, and figured out where I was.
i allways use sorts of sounds to know ware i'm traveli>g. or if it's a food place my nose. to sniff it smiles.
You know I often wonder why blind people veer. I find I do it less and less but for me it is because when I was yung, I walked slower. When you take brisk, decisive steps, you will find you walk more straight. That's just me; I'm sure they're are many reasons why blind people veer. It makes me wonder if it is only a blindness thing. If so, what causes it? It is quite frustrating to drift. When I was in colledge, I had a sighted friend who would mention it to me and ask why that happened. I just laughed and said "I don't know."
Perhaps sometimes we tend to drift in the direction of certain sounds without realizing we're doing so. Or perhaps we try to veer away from a certain noise, such as traffic, and end up veering too far in the other direction. I know for sure I have done that. My problem, I think, is that I still miss being able to rely on vision that I no longer have.
I definitely understand abot veering away from traffic. That's a natural tendency. I do it all the time, although on a few occasions I've had my toes pointed in such a way that when I come up to the intersection and go to cross I end up crossing to the oppsite corner of the intersection instead of just to the other side of the one street. Not as big of a deal on a quiet country street but certainly not a habit you want to get into when you're crossing busier intersections. And parking lots can be a bitch to navigate unless you walk right next to the street and you have a curb or something to trail along. As for trailing a building I've actually had a few O&M instructors try to discourage me from doing tat because, in their words, there are too many people in that area to make that practical.
But I've veered when there was no audio I wanted to get away from. I've veered just walking down a hallway. So again, we're back to square one.
I think the bottom line is that we're all different and have different levels of travel skills. No one has done it on this board, but I hate it when I hear blind people who are good travelers putting down and making fun of blind people who are not. We just have to get help when we need it and not worry about the opinions of snobby blind people who think their way is the only way to do things.
amen to the last poster!
I certainly agree!
I definitely agree about the snobby blind person. The sad part is when said snobby blind person is not, in fact, a good traveler but acts like she's the best in the world. I knew such a girl a few years back while attending one of those independent living training centers. This girl wasn't a student at least at that time but certainly could have stood to become one. She not only refused to use her cane but also refused sighted guide until being more or less forced into it. She meandered through the mall like she was drunk. I, knowing my own limitations, chose to go sighted guide with the other person we'd gone with. Well a few weeks later this girl joined a larger group of us and we went out for a sort of early dinner at a favorite restaurant near the apartments we were staying in. You basically just walked across the street and there you were, though you had to navigate a parking area before you got to the crossing. I didn't go sighted guide this time because I was reasonably familiar with the route. Well this tag-along girl did her usual zigging and zagging and at one point almost got it by a car. I remarked mildldy thhat she might want to be a bit more careful. Her response was who went sighted guide at the mall last time? I wanted to remark that avoiding instaces like that was exactly the reason I went sighted guide. Besides malls can be qite tricky to navigate as a blind person since there aren't as many landmarks to go by, only cues which might not necessarily be available every time. But se got on others who didn't do tings the way she did.
Margorp, in answer to your question(s):
There are physics reasons for why if you move more quickly your movements will wobble less. But the blind are not the only ones who veer: Anyone without a point of reference will veer.
Drop your sighted friend off in the middle of a desert or a snowstorm without a point of reference or sense of direction, and put a GPS tag on him the way they do animals, and you will see him veer. You veer because you have no reference points. If you have no reference points you veer less. So if you're walking down the sidewalk at a reasonably good clip, you hear the street on one side and you hear buildings go by you on the other, you've got reference points you can count on. Now, it's 3 in the morning, you're just past the last building, and now passing a parking lot. Now you're gonna veer, because there's no traffic, and if the parking lot feels exactly like the sidewalk you will veer some, even if unperceptibly, because you now lack reference points. I guess then again, if it's 3 in the morning, there's kinda other reasons people veer also ... lol
Seriously though, people out on kayaks on the water Mayday us if they are too far from shore on a cloudy day, if they can't see the shore, and they're out "paddling around in circles," Yes I have heard that from aircraft people who watched from overhead. Then they feel stupid when someone comes out there and pulls them in a ways and they can see the shore. Of course we'd rather they not feel stupid,but get a GPS instead.
Anyway those are sighted people, and they are veering far far worse than you do. If we see it as a points-of-reference thing rather than the blind thing all them overweaning institutional types make it out to be, we can make necessary adjustments when running around. So if the street traffic goes dead, and you just passed the last building, either follow the street itself with your cane if you must or walk on the "incorrect" side of the sidewalk with a foot on the blacktop of the parking lot and a foot on the sidewalk, just prepare to slip across to the other side if you hear footfalls or a bike coming on that side. Stuff like that.
They just belly-ache about it being a blind thing, but drop them off in the middle of the desert, and you'll see them veer like you've never even seen people do it! It's like driving: people who are driving along a so-called straight road are constantly making adjustments to the steering wheel without even knowing it, because technically, there is no straight. You are on an eliptical planet. Hope that helps.
I am completely in favor of getting on to people who don't have mobility skills. Provided that you do it in a logical and nonhurtful way.
If you have a friend, lets name her Molly, and Molly is wandering across a parking lot without using her cane, and runs smack into a brick wall, wouldn't you go up to her and say, "Look, Molly, sweetheart, if you used your cane, that wouldn't happen"? If you were a good friend to dearr molly, you would not hesitate to do so.
I see people all the time who don't use their cane, and I have no qualms about telling them. People need to stop beating around the bushes and worry about hurting people's feelings and whatnot. Sometimes a person either gets their feelings hurt, or they get their body hurt. I'd rather it were their feelings, its a lot easier to heal from.
for those that just toss mobility out of the window i agree that they need to be told about it but if the person is honest trying to go around and aren't doing well going off on them doesn't help matters.
I too have a very hard time with straight line travel, always have and most likely always will so.
if people aren't told where they're going wrong, and suggestions aren't made to help them improve, they'll never have a chance of becoming more confident and traveling successfully.
while everyone certainly has their strong points, it's essential to know how to get from point A to point B.
this by no means is meant to say that you shouldn't ask for help when it's really needed, but that walking in parking lots/veering doesn't have to be something people stress over.
as a couple others have said, walking at a faster pace certainly helps one veer a lot less. that, and not thinking about it.
the more energy you devote to thinking, "I'm probably gonna veer", or something similar, the more likely it is that you'll do so.
If somebody needs a cane and doesn't choose to use one, that is there stupidity and it's not my place to say anything.
Sounds like sense to me. I've never seen a blind person not use a cane, but if I did and I didn't know them, I would be like the last poster and not say anything. Not real interested in being seen as picking a fight and / or acquiring a fat lip. I'm not afraid of defending myself or my family, but really, starting shit with a stranger? I don't think so.
Oh I've seen it. I've seen so many people puffed up with pride, refusing to even say the word cane. What happens? They go bing bang boom, right on the under-inflated air matriss.
I can not walk in a strate line eather in a parking plot or small street eather.
I do nother mad that I can not do it rite cause I know that it is hard to do.
I guess all we can do is keep at it.
agree with posters 24 and 25: if someone is that ignorant then saying anything to them would just be a complete waste of time.
I agree with what Chelsea said. From personal experience I've found that the more I worry about veering the more it happens. I won't say I'm a great traveler, rather I am a confident one. Nobody is perfect at traveling no matter how little you veer or how good you are at "memorizing" routes. Confidence makes the difference.
right on!