[nfb-db] Crossing Streets?

[Alicia Richards]

Arielle, I can't speak for Kerri, obviously.  Only she knows her own mind on 
this.  But I would like to say that I respectfully disagree with your 
message.  Yes, while at LCB, the worse that can happen if Kerri misjudges 
traffic is that her travel instructor corrects her.  Once gone from LCB, the 
worst that can happen if she mis-hears traffic is that she is struck by a 
car, resulting in injury or death.  I think of this along the lines of our 
sleepshade policy.  We require sleepshades so that a student cannot rely 
upon remaining vision.  We want them to learn the alternative techniques of 
blindness.  Trying to force Kerri to use unreliable hearing to judge traffic 
seems tanttamount to a lot of state Centers I can think of that try to make 
students use their unreliable remaining vision to travel.  I equate it to a 
travel instructor having a student try to use their vision to tell what 
color the light is, when they have a hard time discerning colors, or when 
their perception of color may depend on how their eyes are functioning that 
day, or the lighting around them, and so forth.  As you and I both know, 
that's not safe or effective, and our Centers  don't encourage it.  If Kerri 
wishes to continue to pursue trying to cross streets using her hearing, that 
is her right, and I support it. But  I also believe she should be allowed to 
explore and use the alternative techniques for someone who is hearing 
impaired as well as blind if she discovers her hearing is not reliable 
enough, and should not be made to feel that her inability to judge traffic 
is her fault. It seems that many deaf-blind people have been made to feel 
belittled because they could not tell traffic patterns due to their hearing 
loss, when that is beyond their control.

I might have once written a reply saying the same thing as yours, actually. 
However, if I've learned anything in the past few years, it is that 
deaf-blindness is a completely other disability than blindness alone.  As 
blind people with hearing, we often don't realize that.  I guarantee you 
that prior to three years ago, I never really considered what it would be 
like to be blind and also have a hearing loss.  I even saw someone with that 
issue go through the Colorado Center while I was there, and like you, I 
figured it was just his fear holding him back, or that he wasn't inteligent, 
etc.  I thought the CCB program should work for everyone.  It took getting 
to know more about deaf-blindness to realize how woefully trained most 
blindness Centers are in dealing with it.  There is only one center in this 
country that specializes in this.  I wish that were not the case.  I wish 
our own centers would be better about educating themselves, because people 
who are deaf-blind have the right to training with our philosophy as much as 
anyone else does.

Alicia