[Trainer-Talk] Helping Blind students with better O&M

[Deborah Armstrong]

*** Typed this up while waiting for my return flight from CSUN ... feel free to share. ***

I recently returned from an access technology conference where multitudes of blind and visually impaired attended. The organizers tried to help us in three different ways. They provided brief sighted guide tours to the exhibit hall. They created tactile maps of the entire venue. And they enlisted a local O&M specialist to give us a one-hour orientation to the place.

Despite their efforts, most of us found ourselves wandering around lost, repeatedly asking sighted folks for assistance. I think the conference organizers' efforts could have been more effective if they'd thought more about what we blind people need to get oriented to an unfamiliar area. The purpose of this long rant -- 'er post -- is to do just that.

Sighted guides

A guide can move you from point A to point B, and unless you actively participate, you are like a tourist on a cruise ship, crossing the endless ocean. When being guided, the world is a one-dimensional space; there's simply a destination and one often feels teleported there. When I take a guide's arm, I try to remember to ask what we are passing, what is behind us and ahead plus request he point out as many landmarks as possible. But sometimes, frustrated about how lost I feel,  I gripe instead about the hotel's confusing layout, or try to forget my disoriented sorrows by chatting with the guide about his job, his family and what is happening at the conference. Making conversation is enjoyable, but adds little to one's orientation ability.

So the helper too should think about what the person he's assisting needs to know. "We are passing the escalators" is helpful;  "We are passing a Down only escalator on our left" is even more helpful, because it alerts me to the important fact that there is no escalator going up next to it. "This hallway is shaped like an oval and if we travel far enough we will curve back to the beginning" helps me understand why a room is sometimes on my left and sometimes on my right. "You can't reliably turn any known direction when you exit this elevator because there are a bank of six elevators here, two sets of three facing each other and the one you take will be random". How useful it would have been had I gotten that information at the start of the conference instead of happening upon it myself when I decided to explore the area in detail with my cane. It took me a while to realize the hotel had two tenth floors, because they were located in separate towers, but only one second and third floor, because a bridge between the two towers combined those floors. In their goal to simply guide me to a destination, nobody thought to clarify this confusing detail until I thought to ask.

Tactile Maps

Blind people vary in their ability to utilize tactile maps, but much of this skill I believe is dependent on motivation. A formerly sighted friend confidently assured me that the tactile maps we received were "useless". A congenitally blind friend found them very helpful. Though, typically people who have seen before find using maps more natural, this isn't always the case. I fell somewhere in between: the map was confusing but not useless.

And here's where tactile maps fall short. A map needs to go through some sort of quality assurance; all the confusing parts need to be analyzed for why they are unclear.  This one was not accompanied by any sort of description. I would have fared better with a recorded or text described guided tour to the map. "At the top left is North and that's the entrance with the revolving door" and "Near the bottom right is a little tactile X showing where the emergency stairs are located".

The maps were also divided, one for the exhibit hall, one for the lobby, one for the second floor and one for the third. It began to feel a bit like looking at maps of Europe, Africa and Australia without access to a globe.

There were also multiple symbols on the map that did not appear in an accompanying key. A series of closely parallel lines represented corridors, which was immediately evident to a sighted friend but not to me. The same friend, along with me could not figure out what the rougher textured areas or a few of the squiggly lines signified. The key was a confusing mixture of tactile symbols and Braille two-letter combinations , and some symbols were missing.  I think they were trying to fit the entire key on one facing page, but it would have been far better to simply use more paper.

O&M Specialists

Here's where I felt like the expert was simply herding cats. I've been oriented by a variety of specialists to a variety of situations, and I think the typical approach is not as effective as it could be. A group is shepherded around, while the specialists notes what's in the immediate vicinity. When the tour is over, I know what is there, but not where everything is at.

A good orientation , in my opinion will start with the general and move to the specific. Take, for example, the building where I work. I would describe it as having two stories, with the second story covering only half the building's area. The building has two entrances, one on the west end facing the parking lot, and the other on the east end facing the cafeteria's back. It has two additional exits on the north and south end, and those doors don't open for entry. The single flight of stairs and corresponding elevator are located together near the center of the building in a large, open space with staff desks and customer service windows in a rough rectangle around that space. There are two long hallways leading north and south respectively, whose openings are slightly off from each other. The north Hallway's entrance is closer to the parking lot side; the south hallways' entrance is closer to the cafeteria side. Each hallway terminates in the aforementioned exit.

In this general description the O&M teacher has the chance to assign meaningful and nonambiguous names to each section of the area being described. I have rarely encountered an O&M person who has thought about giving a meaningful name to each area, simply picking something vague on the fly like "your central road" or "the path by the science center".

In our orientation to the hotel, the specialist used words like "front" and "back" "left" and right" "lobby area" and "elevator area" even though the hotel had about twenty entrances, one lobby spanning the entire floor, two separate towers, and multiple elevators for ascending each. Some of the ambiguity could have been reduced if she'd thought ahead about specific names to assign to each area and also if she'd insisted everyone face her while she talked. Though I prefer cardinal directions, many others wanted the more familiar Left, right, straight ahead and behind you. Because we all were facing different directions, her already vague instructions grew increasingly more confusing as our tour proceeded. As you orient someone it's paramount to ask yourself if you are being precise and unambiguous.

"Now over here to your right is an escalator" was a typical example. "On my right is an escalator, can all of you turn and face it now" would have been more instructive. "Directly in front of us now is an elevator lobby with eight elevators. It is one of two such lobbies, the hotel has another at the south end about 100 yards behind everyone facing me now." That would have been more helpful than "the elevators are straight ahead."

She could have continued to explain it was easy to find because you could hear the soft thump of a revolving door leading to the outside immediately to the escalator's left. I discovered that audio clue on my own because there was thank goodness only one revolving door.  She could have further told us that there were no other revolving doors in the building but that there were nineteen other entrances. She could have then pointed it out on the tactile maps. In fact, before walking us all around the hotel, it would have been wonderful if she'd guided us around the tactile map first. But she didn't even know about the tactile map, nor did she have a printed map to refer to. The level of preparation therefore you put in to orienting someone will affect how well oriented they become.
Audio clues can be helpful but misleading if not well thought out. I was told the elevator was near the bar and I could find it because of the bar noise. The hotel had two bars, and a sort of expanded Starbucks, from which a cacophony of crowd noise emanated. Finding a bar wasn't hard, figuring out which one I found was. Our campus has numerous buildings with loud air conditioning compressors, but these are not good audio clues in the winter, nor in the summer if you are trying to distinguish one building from another since all the air conditioning is running then. Yet I often hear an O&M instructor using those air compressors as audio clues for new blind students.

Another problem was that the specialist, when she did use names, used different ones than were found in the conference literature, the tactile map and the actual posted signs. The conference literature described one dog run by the "kettner" entrance" and another by the "retail road". I asked many people where the kettner entrance and the retail road were, and nobody knew. No sign had those names; their names on the map were different, and the O&M specialist didn't know either. I found a total of five different dog runs, or rather my dog did, probably because he was not hampered by the confusing directions or the inconsistent signage, but I never figured out which dog run corresponded to the ones described in the conference literature. In fact the dog runs were easier to locate than the human restrooms, probably because dogs like finding them a whole lot!

More on ambiguity's failure

Synonyms are a great boon to a fluid writing style, but never helpful when it comes to O&M. On the campus where I work we have a library whose sign reads "Learning Center". If I created a map for here, I would never dream of confusing people by labeling it "library", even though that of course is what it is. I have explained when orienting someone whether they are blind or sighted that the learning center building is where the library is located. This clears up confusion while remaining consistent.

Because the specialist wanted to cover all areas in the conference center, she walked us through each one. But at the end of the tour, I was even more bewildered about how they all connected. Since we'd taken an escalator to get to certain floors, I was unclear if an elevator would go there and if so which one. Because the corridors ran in a curving ellipse, I was at first confused which end I was on and got lost until I began to visualize the shape in my mind. Because some corridors branched off from a main foyer, but because we had entered them from different places, I had trouble visualizing their layout as well.  Because we went down half a floor to explore one area, back up half a floor to explore another, then up to a third floor and back down to a second floor, we covered the full venue, but didn't take the shortest route, hence it was unclear where everything was located in relation to everything else. Because she started with the specific and never moved back to a general description, I got a kinesthetic sense of distance but few clues how to find something on my own.  Before one can make an area familiar, they need a mental picture of where anything is located in relation to everything else. They need a reliable list of clues and cues to know where they are in that mental map as well.

While I am ranting about ineffectual O&M, let me point out a problem which occurs especially for our less confident blind students. They are repeatedly guided to the gym, a restroom, or classroom and eventually told usually in a frustrated tone that they should know the way by now. being guided somewhere isn't the same as knowing the way. The route to our public restroom is crowded by long snaking lines that are held in check by ropes on posts, which a cane doesn't always encounter and which a guide dog bypasses altogether. Our building also has corridors crowded with stand-up plastic sandwich board signs, information desks which stick out in to the middle of the hall and students who sit on any available floor space with their study books spread out. As a guide weaves in an out of this crowded zoo, the inexperienced blind traveler can find the experience overwhelming and disorienting. The first time he tries to find a restroom he gets tangled up in a long line, gets helped around an information table and is now headed in the wrong direction. The guide must take responsibility to point out the obstacles and landmarks in a person's path and help them learn an area on their own; simply guiding them multiple times will not sufficiently orient most blind people.

Additionally, my mind at least tends to think in 90-degree angles. This illusion is further strengthened by people who insist I have to go straight ahead when in fact the path I need is northeast of me when I'm facing north.

And when paths are not as narrow as sidewalks they can be a challenge to follow. Five asphalt paths lead out of the back of my work building and all of them are as wide as six-lane streets. Sighted people might tell me to go straight to reach the back of the cafeteria, but I know I must curve slightly to the right, and the depth of that curve depends on which door I've exited. If I were to literally walk perfectly straight, I'd encounter a row of bushes and because they look like 90% of the landscaping on campus, I'd not be sure if I were to go right or left to pass the shrubbery by. If I start out in a straight line, but make a sharp right before encountering the shrubbery, I can find myself on a path that parallels the cafeteria and a building beyond it, but if I go straight too far, I'll miss that path and if I don't turn right soon enough, I'm following a different path. If I keep the building close to my right and make a sharp immediate right turn, I will actually travel down a road leading to the street -- a road frequented by loud delivery trucks. If I take another path away from my building, which sighted people insist is also straight ahead, (but is actually Northwest), I know I have to curve slightly to the left, to pass our technology center and avoid the path to the cafeteria, and if I make a sharp left turn, I am in a section of campus where a variety of other paths, all at DG45 angles converge. When exiting my building, any slight deviation from the direction I intend to take, such as when I have to circumnavigate an information booth or giant temporary sign smack dab in the midst of the converging paths, will throw me off-course. If a big UPS truck blocks the route, it can be a challenge to get around it and back in line for the appropriate path. Because I have a mental map of this campus, I can get back on track fairly quickly, but this happened only because I work here and I made great efforts to explore and deliberately check out every path in depth.

The mental fortitude required to repeatedly explore unfamiliar areas until you've sufficiently mentally mapped it is not always available to me. It's a very exhausting endeavor.  And, for less confident blind people, that mental fortitude is never available. At this convention, I decided to tramp up and down all the corridors and read all the Braille signs the night before my sessions began. I was stopped repeatedly by well-meaning people who asked me where I wanted to go and could they help me get there. I explained over and over that I was simply getting oriented. I believe my intense exploring was painful for them to watch, though interestingly, my sighted husband finds it delightful to watch me explore an unfamiliar area. People mostly just want to grab that poor lost blind person and get them there.

At any rate, I did manage to find every room and read every sign, but the following day, it wasn't helpful, since knots of people congregating in the corridors blocked the Braille signs anyway and navigating around the crowds gave the corridors a different mental shape than when I'd explored alone the night before.  It was after all, just easier to get someone to guide me around at least in that space.

And our less confident blind students often come to the same conclusion though they might attend classes here for several years.

In summary, I believe there are overlooked opportunities for our blind students to be more independent on campus, but it requires a partnership between blind learners and sighted helpers to build a mental map that is robust enough to encompass missed or wrong turns.

--Debee