Walking in my shoes

1)      First of all, walking in a straight line was more challenging than expected. I could feel the rills through the soles of the shoes as much as textures can be felt through thick gloves. It was a rather scary experience to hear cars passing by and not being sure how far they were.

I thought that some marking which would signal that I can’t see could have been useful, so that bikers wouldn’t expect me to get off the biking path. I was no longer sure if the biking path was to the left or to the right of the street or on which side I was walking myself, for that matter.  I was constantly concerned about bumping into people or that bikes would not know that I don’t see and expect me to move off the biking path.

For me it was a confusing and slightly frightening experience. One thing that I can imagine people with disabilities do themselves is to try to cling to every sound, feel of the environment and use their other senses for orientation.

There was a survival dimension to taking a few steps down the street. I was probably a fish on dry land, since I never before had to rely on the senses which I was now using in order to accomplish this task. Normally it would have been mostly seeing and to a lower dimension hearing which I would have relied on. Now it was mostly hearing and to a slight level feeling which I used in order to accomplish the same simple task of walking down a street.

2)      I have tried completing the assignment in several scenarios.

Once it was at home in one of the rooms, but I realized that I was well too accustomed with every little corner and detail of the room and knew exactly how many steps it takes to navigate from one place to another. I don’t know if I was imaging it, but I could feel the proximity of objects. If moving very slowly, I could feel a small tingle in the fingers when I was approaching areas where I was expecting objects to be positioned. Later attempts made me reach the conclusion that it was the expectation of finding an object in that area rather than the actual presence of the object which would cause the tingle.

I tried one more time at work, in the relaxation room but gave up as I realized I was already accustomed to the setting of that room as well.

One last time I tried in a large public toilet. Then I realized that I was gripping to all details that I could remember from the few seconds when I had actually seen the room. I tried not to cling to the images that my brain had registered in those few seconds, but it felt like a survival instinct was kicking in at an unconscious level, trying to anticipate what was in every corner of the room and where the dangers might lie.

(by Elena Balan)

Walk in my shoes

Walking on rills

While walking with my eyes closed on the rills in downtown Uppsala, which are designed for people with visibility impairment, I can feel the rills quite distinctly through the sole of my shoes. Worth noting though is that the soles of my shoes are very thin, since they are summer shoes. This brings a problem to mind, what happens in the winter when the shoes are more robust and have a thicker sole? Well, the rills are obviously going to be a lot harder to feel with your feet. I haven’t tried walking on them myself with winter shoes, but I imagine that they still can be felt even though not as clearly as with summer shoes. However if there is snow and ice on the rills it could be close to impossible to feel the difference between the rills and the regular pavement. This is probably not an issue in downtown Uppsala though since there is ground heating there, but these kinds of rills exist in other places around town where ground heating doesn’t necessarily exist.

I didn’t feel safe walking on the rills for more than a few meters. I had the feeling I was going to walk into something even though I was on the rills. It was also very hard to know how far I had walked when I finally opened my eyes.

In the picture where there is a sign saying “Pedestrians should use the other side”, due to the construction work, I start thinking about how a blind person would perceive this. They can’t read what says on the sign, because there is no braille, and if they wouldn’t have a cane they would just stroll right on into the fence that is placed across the rills on the ground. There is no way of knowing the fence is there. A way to counteract this would be to maybe have a speaker on low volume to send out the same message as the sign or to add braille to the sign.

Navigating in a dark room

As another experiment I walked into a room a little bigger than a regular bathroom and with no windows and turned off the lights. If I then feel my way around the room I can find my way to the sink and the toilet seat, in a somewhat clumsy way though. The only thing I can be sure about is the objects I can touch. If I were to lose my orientation I would be back to square one and have to start feeling my way around again. So if it would’ve been in a much bigger room or outside, I would be lost.

Reflections on the exercise

This was a very informing exercise that put me in a blind person’s shoes more than I have ever been earlier. I don’t often think about the things in life that are actually very hard and confusing for people with disabilities such as the loss of sight. I’m just speculating right now but I imagine that the people who develop the means for handicapped people aren’t handicapped themselves. So they probably have a hard time knowing what the best aid for the different disabilities would be.

Walking in other shoes, in the darkness

Though one can never really feel the same as a real blind person would, we were asked to try to emulate as much as possible a couple of situations in the everyday life of these people. The following are thoughts on these experiences, reflections on what it would be like if I had to “find myself in the darkness” and maybe need help for that.

For these recreations I wore sunglasses. My intention behind this was to not let other people see that I was “blind”, so that I could test two things at the same time: my own experience plus how people react to a blind person who does not actively show this impairment (e.g. via a stick). However, the length of the experiment plus the small size of the participants do not allow us to draw conclusions on their behavior: they did not come closer when they saw I was not walking so sure of myself. I could have sworn that some of them thought I was slightly drunk!

As for the main experience, I saw that two aspects have to be taken into consideration: adapting to the physical world and adapting to the social environment. In other words: when one does not see, one needs to find other ways to interact with the world and people around.

Thinking about the case that I lost my orientation, the first thing that came to my mind was asking a nearby walker for directions, as I would normally do (if I don’t have a map, etc.). But in this case, how do I know if there are people around? Even if I know there are, how do I know if they are willing to help? Usually I might tell by non-verbal communication (seeing their attitude) but now that was not an option. Maybe a system that sends message (“I need help”) could be developed. People willing to help would be subscribed and get an alert when needed.

Adaptation to physical and social aspects come together in other situations: if I can’t use my eyes, I may use other things to help me picture my environment. But they also come with new problems (e.g what if my partner is severely allergic to my guiding dog?). Why does the stick have to be so attention-drawing? Can a person be blind and not be noticed only because of that? Not to mention how, even when solutions are there (like special marks on the floor to indicate where the train would stop), they usually only work in theory (as when the bus does not stop where it should).

Not being able to see was, at least at the beginning, a scary experience. But it let me see (ironic choice of words!) that we usually emphasise only side of the coin: blind people need to adapt to the new world, as in some of the ways explained above. However, what happens in the other direction? What do we know about how to make a blind person comfortable in his/her everyday life? Do we know how to help them if they need it? Why is this not even mentioned during our early childhood education? If we want blind people to be just that, people, without a permanent label, then we need to include them in all possible aspects of our lives.

Assignment 0

Testing the life of a blind person

Rill Walking:

When walking it was quite easy to follow the rills. But that was prob du to me having thin soles, but during the walk i always felt like i would walk into something or someone.

cause of this sensation i did not dare to walk very far.

so what about winter time?

Even if the street is clear from snow and ice the thicker soles you would probably use would block all perception of the rills making them even harder if not imposible to follow,

so are the they forcing blind people to use shoes with thinner soles in the winter?

Darkroom:

When in the darkroom it felt mutch “bigger” and the sound from the ventilation became mutch more obvius, so even if i had a mental image of the room from before, the distances felt “off” when i tried to use touch to guide me, just as if everything was further away now when i could not see it.

to the question what i would do if i would lose my orientation i would try to find somekind of landmark that could guide me, but that require that i know the sorroundings from before, and thats not realy an option for a blind person as it woul take more time to get used to everything.

/rilo2915

(Second try, aparently the post i tryed making on thuesday did not happen and only the draft remained)