Mobility

Everyone likes to be as independent as possible and those of us with visual impairment are no exception. It is really exciting when we can use our long cane to find our way to the local cafe and buy a cup of coffee all by ourselves. We also feel very proud when we can buy things from Tesco to make our own lunch.

There is much work to be done before we can achieve these goals. First of all, when we begin school we need to know our body parts and follow instructions to turn left, right, forwards, backwards. This is hard work! We are then helped to find our way around the classroom and to remember to put things back in the same place so we can find them next time we need them. This is very important when you do not see very well.

Once we can do all of these things we then learn how to find our way to the dining room and swimming pool. We use a special rail to help us at first and we must remember to use the back of our hand to track along walls and feel for doors. We do not want to hurt our fingers' tips as we need them for reading Braille.

After this, we are given our cane. We have to learn to move our cane from left to right and to keep it on the ground. We do not want to give anyone an injury!

Our teacher then tries to trick us by putting things in our way - we are very good at finding them, though! This game helps us to use our cane to find obstacles on the pavement outside.

Our mobility sessions are great fun but are very hard work and we have to really concentrate. It is all worth it though when we can take a bus into Newcastle Centre and visit the big shops with our teacher walking behind us.

Our teacher takes us to the shops and we learn the order of them. We have to remember this for next week when we have to decide which shop we need to go to in order to buy a particular item. We use our hearing and sense of smell to help us with this. We certainly know when we pass the fish shop ...