Re: embarrassed to hold the white cane
What about the weatherproofing, what about the weight (and heat) in warm months, what about when your in a crowd of people, what about overhead obstacles. What about the battery power limitations, what about the code that's supposed to be so good your willing to put your life in it's hands even though we are still years from making autonomous cars safe enough to have confidence in and they have massive corporations behind them. and most importantly for the majority of potential users, what about the cost, how will you get blindness organizations to believe your solution is safer, more convenient, and more socially acceptable enough to justify that massive difference, when many of them can hardly get enough grant money to keep running the programs they do have.
I'm glad people are thinking about this because eventually something concrete could come out of these ideas, but ideas are a dime a dozen, while good ideas that could actually work and have real planning behind them are priceless.
And yeah, the cane marks you in allot of negative ways I agree, but that can be useful too. Ask a low vision person how often they have to convince people they need basic assistance, because they don't look blind.
Plus, what is your excuse for slightly bumping into people, walking on the wrong part of the path, not seeing people's cues to move out of the way or go somewhere, or touching things to find out what they are for future reference if you have no cane. Someone with a reasonable amount of intelligence is going to realize oh hey, he's blind, that's why he's doing that because he has to.
It's also important for showing drivers at an uncontrolled crossing when you want to go, since you can't make eye contact or see them wave, and for making sure your moving with a line or finding a free seat on a bus. Doing so without a cane would be much more awkward.
People will see a blind person doing well with a cane and walking places with confidence and independents, and say wow! That blind guy is doing all that? I didn't even know that was possible! That's awesome!
So it's more the person behind the cane in the end, especially if you have enough social confidence to strike up conversations with people and to laugh off simple mistakes, since they'll happen probably multiple times a day if you lead an active lifestyle.
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