Adjustment to Blindness Training

Adjustment to blindness training can be a great benefit to blind people. With the correct training, blind people can live normal and productive lives and compete on terms of equality with their sighted peers.

The length of time can vary depending on the program: some are for a summer; others are six months, nine months or a year. Some adults who are newly blind find it hard to leave their families and go to an unfamiliar place for a great length of time. Try to look at what a difference it will make in the long run. If you spend nine months apart from your children learning concepts that better you as an adult, you can give them years and years of happiness because they’ll know you are just as good as any parent who has sight.

I attended a training center in 1999. I had a very good friend who did not receive very good training. I will compare how attending an affective training center helped me while her training did not help her at all, by using myself as an example. I am not trying to brag or say that I am better than anyone because I attended a training center. I just want to convey what a difference it can make when a blind person receives proper training and has great daily living skills.

To protect the identity of the person, we will call her Mary. That is not her real name. I tried to help her seek better training. Rather than helping her, it led to us not being friends anymore. She did not take my advice as help, but took it as insulting and terminated our friendship.

The decision to go way to a training center can be very scary. You are often going away from your familiar surroundings, traveling to a new larger city and learning to live all over again. Being blind can be very scary at first, especially if it happened suddenly. Attending a training center requires you to learn a lot of new things in a very short amount of time. It also gives you an opportunity to really examine what it means to be blind.

The training centers focus on very important things: Braille, home management, cane travel, technology and employment. There is also time spent on discussing issues like coping with loss, advocating for yourself, feeling good about using a cane around your family and other adjustment issues. There are two main areas that the training centers focus on: teaching blindness alternatives and giving encouragement and support so that you can come to believe in the value of the newly acquired skills. Probably the most important thing to be learned is that it is perfectly respectable to be blind. This only comes from inside you. No one can teach you this. You must come to realize it on your own.

Braille I knew Braille from a very young age. I started learning it in third grade, mastering it by fourth grade. When I attended the training center, everything was a review for me, but it was good practice. I was not proficient with the slate and stylus. It was wonderful to review that and become faster. Mary also learned Braille at a very young age. That was the one thing she was very proficient with.

Braille plays a very important role in a blind person’s success. We use it daily to label and identify objects, keep records and notes as sighted people do, to read books or other material for business or leisure, etc. Although you may think Braille is the hardest thing to master when you enter into a center’s training program, you would be surprised at how quickly and easily you can learn it. There are two types of Braille commonly taught in training programs. Grade one Braille is the alphabet and numbers. Grade two Braille is all the contractions. It is like a short form of Braille. Grade two Braille is the most commonly used form of Braille because it is faster to read and saves room on the bookshelf! Grade three is an even shorter abbreviated form of Braille. It is not taught in most training centers, and many blind people do not know it or use it.

The instructor will teach you how to use a Perkins Braille writer and write on a slate and stylus, which is a portable tool for writing Braille. Many people appreciate the slate and stylus, because you can keep it in your purse or pocket and it is handy when you want to jot down a number or an important date. Sighted people have a pen and paper when something arises and they have to write down something important. We as blind people should be able to do the same.

Mobility It is very important to be able to travel about independently. If you enter into the training center’s program with no experience in using a cane, don’t feel uncomfortable. Instructors are used to working with people who are beginners. They will teach you techniques on how to use your cane to locate objects, see what is near you, how to cross streets using parallel and perpendicular traffic, how to find the bus stop, how to determine which bus to use, etc.

Before going on a route, most instructors will teach you to call the transit information line. When you call, you want to ask a few questions. First, tell them the address you’re starting out at and your destination. Tell them what time you plan to leave and when they give you times, get at least three times. For example, if they start out giving you times when the bus is leaving, get three times, in case you miss the first bus. That was a very important lesson my mobility instructor taught me back in high school. You will also need to find out the name or number of the bus. Sometimes the routes overlap. You want to be sure you are getting on the right bus. It will also be important to find out where the bus stop is that you need to be at in order for the bus to stop for you. This will vary from city to city.

I started mobility training when I was thirteen years old. This was not a part of a residential training program, but based in my own community. For the first year, the mobility instructor I had at the time just took me around my high school, and a few blocks from my home when I lived with my parents. Then, in high school, I started with another mobility instructor. We began going into St. Louis. That is when I began learning bus routes and how to really get around the area by myself. I felt very confident in my travels. My instructor told me that I never even came close to getting hit by a car or stepping into the danger zone. When I went to the training center, it further developed my experiences as a confident traveler and made me even more confident about my abilities. So confident, in fact, that today I think nothing about traveling to other states by myself or with my fiancé Chris.

Mary, on the other hand, was taught cane travel by an instructor who thought it was dangerous for blind people to travel on their own. This guy had no business being an instructor. She was only taught specific routes, how to get from certain places back home to other specific places. When she came to visit me, and we traveled the streets of St. Louis, she held tightly to my arm for dear life. She wanted me to tell her when it was safe to cross the street.

One day I asked her, “If I’m blind and I can do it, why can’t you do it too?” I really wanted to help her since we were very good friends at the time. She did not accept my help. She just wanted things done for her. Yet, she talked and dreamed of one day having kids. I asked her to think realistically. I said, “If you can’t confidently cross the street and be an independent blind traveler, how will you do things for your kids as a mother?” She did not think realistically about the independence she would need to gain before having a family. She lived in a fairy tail world.

Some training centers have you complete two major routes when you’re there. First is your drop off. They will take you to a location and you must find your way back to the center. You can only ask one question. The second drop off is sometimes referred to as a monster route. They will take you much farther and expect you to make your way back. Again you can ask only one question throughout your journey.

Having little experience or confidence with a cane, the drop off seems scary. It is not meant to be a means of intimidation or torture contrary to anything you may have heard! The drop off helps you to understand that you have good skills, you know how to use them and that you can get yourself out of a tough situation.

I never thought I would need to use what I learned on drops. I was terribly wrong. On several occasions I have gotten out of a cab or off of a bus thinking the driver understood where I was asking to be let out. It is a shock when you realize that you aren’t where you thought you were. The experiences of the drop offs at the center allowed me to work through the problem logically and calmly.

Home Management There are many tasks you will confidently learn in home management: cleaning, cooking, how to dress appropriately in different situations, shopping, etc. Every center teaches different concepts in home management. If there is something specific you do not know how to do, the staff is happy to show you and make sure you understand.

Each center is typically equipped with a kitchen and bathroom. When you make a meal, for example, you will learn how to wash the dishes, clean the counter and sink when you have finished. Once you have learned how to clean the counter, for example, you use those same patterns you used to clean the counter and apply them to other places in your home. If you learn how to clean the kitchen counter, then you now obviously know how to clean the bathroom counter. I was taught at the center that when I wipe dirt off the counter, I can have a dust pan underneath the edge of the counter. When I wiped the dirt off, it would fall directly into the dust pan. You are also taught how to sweep, mop, vacuum, and clean your bathroom… all the tasks you will need to clean your house spotless before your company arrives!

When it came to home management I was grateful to learn all the new concepts and how blind people did them. Although my mom taught me growing up how to do certain tasks around the house, I found myself doing them more confidently and with ease once taught by the staff at the center.

Mary, however, always had her mother clean her apartment for her. Although she was taught at a young age by a rehab teacher from Rehab Services for the Blind how to clean, she was not motivated or interested in it. I told her that none of us were interested in it. It’s just one of those things you have to do. I don’t get up in the morning and say, “Oh yea!! Today I get to clean the toilet, I’m so excited!” It’s just a part of every day life and housework that must be done.

For many years in a row, Mary would come spend the summer with me. She would also spend the holidays with me because although she lacked independence, I still wanted to be her friend and continue to motivate and encourage her to be an independent person. She was very bright and had a great mind, but she completely lacked independence as a blind person. Mary always asked me why I never came to visit her. I never wanted to tell her the real truth. So, I always made up the excuse of not having the time or the money. Finally, she told me she knew I was lying and wanted the real truth.

In previous conversations, Mary told me that she had roaches in her apartment. She also said that sometimes, while shaving her legs, she accidentally cut herself, and bled on the bathroom floor. She did not know how to clean the blood off the floor. She would wait for her mom to come and help.

These two stories Mary told me made me want to stay as far away from her as I could. I knew if she came to my house and something happened, I could take care of the situation. But I was really uncomfortable going into unfamiliar territory when Mary lacked the independence to resolve such minor situations as cleaning her bathroom floor when an accident arose or making sure her house was clean enough to prevent roaches from living with her.

Cooking There were many techniques the center taught me that made me very confident while cooking I was always afraid to take hot pans off the stove to drain them into a colander. I also wondered how I would learn things such as how to know when the hamburger was done, how would I know when the water was boiling, etc. When I went to the center, I was taught how to notice the texture of many foods. I began to understand how hamburger felt when it was done. I learned that when water is at a boil, you can put your hands on the handles of the pot and feel them vibrating. I also learned about talking gadgets that will help you when cooking such as talking meat thermometers, talking timers, talking kitchen scales, longer oven mitts that go up to your elbows that you can use when you’re first starting, different steak knives, etc.

Some centers have you prepare two major meals while in the program. You prepare a small meal for five or ten people, and a major meal, just before leaving the program for forty or fifty people. This is so that you feel comfortable and confident cooking for both small and large groups of people.

Mary only knew how to make microwaved meals and meals in the crock pot. I often wondered how her meals in the crock pot tasted, considering she never learned how to cut food by herself. How could she get her ingredients into the pot without first cutting or preparing them? When she visited me, I constantly had to cut her food for her. She did not know how to deal with noodles. When I made spaghetti one night, she said that my noodles were too long and she did not know how to get them onto her fork.

When I would go to Walgreens for necessities, Mary would come with me and get ten or twenty dollars worth of candy in bags. She would eat candy day after day instead of eating nutritious foods. Sometimes, if I made a meal where she would have to cut the food or get something onto her fork, she would eat the candy instead of eating my food because she said it was too difficult to eat. I felt sorry for her because she did not want to get the help she so desperately needed in order to be a healthy and independent blind person.

When I would mention the idea of attending a training center to acquire the necessary daily living skills she needed, she replied, “I’m not going to let those independent living centers boss me around and tell me how to do things.” She saw it as a threat rather than a help. It was far from being a threat. The staff are there to help people and they enjoy seeing people become successful at the end of their training experience. Although they might be a little hard on you, they just want you to succeed. They only have a limited amount of time with you in the program. So they try to cram as much as they can into that time. Sometimes it can become intense, but the end result of independence is extremely rewarding, and it is something you will have for a lifetime if you continue to use it.

Technology Most centers also teach you about adaptive technology. They show you the different screen readers, how to navigate the Internet, how to use Microsoft products, etc. They may also teach you how to scan books with scanning software such as Kerzweil or Open Book. You might also learn how to use a note taker like the Braille’n’Speak, Braille Note or a similar product.

Other Activities Aside from the daily activities at the center, you may also do activities such as rock climbing, swimming, rafting, tandem biking, Christmas tree cutting, etc. They don’t ask you to do these activities simply because they’re fun and recreational. Instead, they expect you to participate in these activities to build confidence. A friend of mine once told me a story of when she went to the same training center I did. She was terrified to begin rock climbing. The instructor said, “Well, why don’t we only do a little today. I will only expect you to take baby steps today and go so far.” The instructor’s little expectations made her more confident. Then, once she did what the instructor asked, she had the desire to go further with the climbing. Soon she became very confident.

I hope that if you are struggling like Mary, you will not let your fears stop you from becoming an independent person. No matter where you are in life, daily living skills are absolutely essential to live a healthy, happy and productive life. If you are married, you will be able to do your part in the relationship, happily and with dignity and pride. Dating can be an enjoyable and exciting experience when you are comfortable and confident. No more worries about what if he wants to go to a fancy restaurant or ice skating. You will know how to handle the situation with poise and confidence, even if you use the wrong fork or fall on the ice. Wouldn’t it be great to have your friends over to your place once in a while and be able to prepare meals for them, instead of them always cooking for you? No matter where you are in your life, it is so rewarding to take just a few months of your time, attend a training center and leave with so many rewarding new skills that will make such a difference in your life forever. Here's a list of adjustment to blindness training centers.