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My friend Susan who was born with retinopathy of prematurity and had 20/400 and 20/800 she is effectively mobility visually impaired – perhaps that cutoff is 20/500, so by 100 ? that’s a lot of stress. Susan and I met because she was the interim director of a program that I was hired to take over, she was the boss, and then I became her boss- e.

Susan’s life experiences are as a “high partial” someone considered having a lot of vision at the school for the blind, and not so much at home. It’s a tough place to reside. – I really think this interview is raw, inciteful and worth a listen.

Wow- she really never understood that it was her right as a human being to be able to feel safe – she began telling us that to get about she held her mother’s hand and she wasn’t allowed to travel alone until freshman in college or 16 -either way – all related to the other problem of her parents not wanting her to use a white cane – so as to attempt to conceal her visual impairment. That’s a rough way to grow up-

I wish we could all just allow blind and low vision human beings to feel safe from the start.

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For New Years Eve 2024 I’m bringing you one of my all-time favorite interviews- conducted November 1999, just shy of Y2K- blind travel was not for the faint of heart. Born in 1963 –he didn’t get a full-time mobility tool until his first guide dog in his second year of college. Sit back and relax – this is a good one

Mike’s honesty about the importance of mobility tools in his life is also filled with the push and pull of the lifetime of growing up with the philosophy that it shouldn’t be that hard to walk if you can’t see. Mike explained safe mobility has become to be the first and most important aspect of his life and his sincere wish is that everybody prioritize safe mobility for all blind travelers.

Happy New Year!!

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From 1999 – 2001, as a young professor I conducted over 100 interviews with employed adults with blindness. I was seeking insight into my profession from the everyday consumer – and I continue to learn and improve my practice by listening absent bias and judgement.

This week we have Barbara Hadnott Her interview was conducted November 21, 1999 – She was born blind in 1953 – Her life is a vivid picture of someone who is at home with the reality of growing up blind, being active, smart, accomplished and yet for the first 27 years never knowing what was in her next step before she landed on it –.

Barbara teaches us that to grow up being guided as a means of efficient blind travel is to accept to being guided as natural adult lifestyle. Yet, she felt able to finally break free once she got her long cane at age 27, and is seeking to become more self-sufficient. Let’s listen to a wonderfully fun and insightful interview Barbara

What an amazing story of triumph– in every other part of life, Barbara was a pioneer and a leader – except the one that was set for her by circumstances beyond her control- Growing up without any independent means to feel safe when walking independently.

Her life is a vivid picture of someone who is at home with the reality of growing up blind, being active, smart, accomplished and never knowing what’s in your next step before you land on it – It makes you prefer to walk with someone else, and all travel is with someone else. She can and does travel alone – yet this is not a competition – her life of having a guide for most travel was created from the ground up- from day one in her life. In 1954, when she turned one, there was no mobility tool available for one-year-old toddlers. Her parents never had a choice.

There is nothing wrong with a life tethered to others, I guess- except that Barbara urged parents to start their children with the cane as soon as possible. Which is now possible with the Pediatric Belt Cane.

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Born in 1953, she got the full crazy treatment growing up blind. Yet, somehow she came through it all very well adjusted-a working wife and mother she has the same desires as anyone..

Her life is one lived just before the technology boom hit – before ride-share apps and other helpful smart phone tricks. Take a trip back with a very smart tour guide – growing up blind and living your best life in the latter half of the 20th century.

She was pushed to be a free-range child until she changed schools, and the rules changed. She wasn’t given a long cane, but she was told to always use a sighted guide and never take the stairs. One summer after 8th grade she got “a taste of using a long cane for the first time” but she wouldn’t be allowed to use a long cane until High School. The fascination is how we get away with this, still today. Blind children still made to feel like something is wrong with them – but it’s the substandard tools that is keeping them from truly being equal.

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This was one of the very early interviews I had done. Twenty-five years ago, late one evening I sat down across the table in my Hunter College office with good friend, Mike Levy. He had come prepared with written statements of memories and family lore surrounding his travel. I would recommend this interview to every graduate student studying O&M. Mike was taught O&M in the eighth grade – using a very rote method of instruction. His answers and memories are incredibly insightful about growing up a star of the “no pain, no gain” early intervention for blind babies.

One can easily hold Mike up as a highly successful employed, married father of two – but there is no doubt the discussion of his travel is a very difficult one for him. He doesn’t like to be questioned too deeply about the meaning behind his memories. His narrative is, he possessed free, open, and no holds barred travel encouraged by his parents that made him the successful traveler he is today, but an adult who stays put waiting for a guide in a hotel room is someone who has had too many bad experiences to risk independent travel. He is proof positive that the “no pain, no gain” upside down childrearing methods caused deep wounds. It would take hours and hours to unpack the harm perpetrated on a human being wo wonderful as little Mike Levy who really is a superhero.

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This was one of the very early interviews I had done. Twenty-five years ago, late one evening I sat down across a table in my Hunter College office with good friend, Mike Levy. He had come prepared with written statements of memories and family lore surrounding his travel. I would recommend this interview to every graduate student studying O&M. Mike was taught O&M in the eighth grade – using a very rote method of instruction. His answers and memories are incredibly insightful about growing up a star of the “no pain, no gain” early intervention for blind babies.

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Judy is a poster child of success absent safe mobility. As a child, she had light and color vision – and that means she was mobility visually impaired. In the 1950s, she learned to use the long cane, but she wasn’t allowed to take it home until she was older. She didn’t really start using a long cane until grad school. She and her husband go on grand adventures around the world. He is a dog guide user and she a long cane user. Her fall into an open manhole is tough to hear – Judy is a delight. Yes, Judy proves that it is possible to grow up without safe mobility and be a highly successful adult– I’m just not clear why we ask this of our blind babies. But that's another story for another time.

This is a laugh out loud great interview –Judy describes her life as a blind traveler before smart phones –with a great story of how she used Atlas speaks an accessible computer maps to help sighted people.

Excerpt:

A. No, I never had a device until I lived in New York, and I was going to graduate school I started using a cane.

Q. Is that right?

A. Yes. It’s really hard to make sense out of because I couldn’t see.

Q. Right, right.

A. And yet, I don’t know how, I mean I know other kids that did this, and I don’t know how. I don’t… now I don’t know how. I mean I think it has more to do with just the incredible versatility of children as much as anything else. I certainly couldn’t do it now.

Q. In thinking back trying to think of some strategies that you used anything come to mind?

A. Ohh. I mean a lot of strategies. You know every crazy thing from you know walking along the line between the grass and the sidewalk and, and, and just hitting things. As a kid I had cuts and bruises from head to toe. People would say well how did you get—I don’t know. You know. I don’t have a clue.

Q. Which one (laugh).

A. Yeah exactly. I don’t. You know. It just you don’t worry about getting hit. You don’t worry about falling down. I absolutely believe that one of the greatest survival—one of the things that, that spells how well a blind person does is how well—how able they are to tolerate pain.

Q. Wow. That shows you’ve earned your…

A. Yeah, because you know if you just keep going and you don’t think about it. You can actually do it.

Q. So is it safe to say the attitudes that your family had were—

A. Oh utterly abhorrent. Yes totally. I mean actually you know as an adult I look back on it I think they were nuts.(laugh) But I’m glad I had them as parents.

Q. How would you characterize their attitudes towards you?

A. Oh I think you know you talk about parents being overprotective of blind kids. My parents were under protective. Oh, utterly I mean to the point of being ridiculous. And, and that’s fine I survived it, but it would have been so easily for, for not to.

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In every accomplishment – the O&M instructor in me wishes more value had been placed on his safety. His life is filled with accomplishments and yet- all I can hear is just how freakin’ hard it has been for him to get around safely and he blames himself – not the inferior tools he’s been provided… He taught orientation and mobility (O&M) too – learn more about that in Part II.

Don McBride Recorded 8/28/99

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