I know, after reading this email I will be the only one standing this side and all others will be at the other end.
I am till date an user who has not used the cane. And quite frankly I am not justifying this, but its a matter of personal choice. To my mind, neither using the cane provides you greater respect or a lower respect, nor not using the cane does so. It is the way you carry yourself and of course the perception of other person with whom you have to deal. I have tried learning mobility with the help of a cane, but time was too late for me to start that. But the lack of this skill neither affects my confidence, and nor I feel uncomfortable asking for help when I need. I feel pretty confident holding the hand of that someone who is helping me if I need. Its just that the way to manage things differ in my case. For example, a cane user can go to the auto stand aloan and get an auto independently. Whereas I can call the cab if an auto guy is not available over phone, at my place and go complete my journey. If I need to go out from the hotel room to say the bar, I can happily call the reception and someone will be there to assist me. Whereas a cane user could do it independently. But yet I am comfortable doing it this way. A cane user can in some cases take some time to explore the new place with a reduced speed, but I am happy to spend that time calling someone and go wherever I want with the same normal speed as I walk generally. A cane user can go inside the washroom and explore it with the cane, whereas I am happy to ask someone to drop me outside the washroom if its a new place and inside I am happy to use my other senses to explore the area. Now talking about the situations which require your urgent action. Cases like that of fire, late night hospitalization of that someone who is dear to you, etc. Firstly and most important it is, I keep the guts to go out and run here and there without cane knowing that I am exposing myself to a greater risk than the cane user if I don't have the cane at that moment. I have also developed the way to recognize the walkable structures as such. A cane user can run here and there, but I can use other ways and get my work done with some help. So my conclusion is that although learning mobility and use of cane is certainly a pluss point, especially in such emergency situations, but whether you want to use it in a daily routine situations or not, should be entirely your choice. I do not subscribe to the rigid view that cane is the only solution for independent living. It is one of the tools for achieving that. And I am also mindful of the fact that in case of an invisible blindness not using the cane can cause greater complexities. Regards, -- Amar Jain. Website: www.amarjain.com Register at the dedicated AccessIndia list for discussing accessibility of mobile phones / Tabs on: http://mail.accessindia.org.in/mailman/listinfo/mobile.accessindia_accessindia.org.in Search for old postings at: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ To unsubscribe send a message to [email protected] with the subject unsubscribe. To change your subscription to digest mode or make any other changes, please visit the list home page at http://accessindia.org.in/mailman/listinfo/accessindia_accessindia.org.in Disclaimer: 1. Contents of the mails, factual, or otherwise, reflect the thinking of the person sending the mail and AI in no way relates itself to its veracity; 2. AI cannot be held liable for any commission/omission based on the mails sent through this mailing list..
