How Colorado’s School for the Deaf and the Blind teaches students to navigate sidewalks, curbs & intersections
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (KRDO) — On a day when a pedestrian was struck and killed by a vehicle, blind students continue their routine of learning how to navigate around traffic that they can’t see.
Instructors teach specialized orientation and mobility (O&M) skills to around 70 students, from preschool to age 21, at the Colorado School for the Deaf and the Blind.
Using a mobility cane and accompanied by an instructor, the students gradually become familiar with walking on sidewalks, stepping on and off curbs, and crossing intersections in the hilly neighborhood around the school on Institute Street, just east of downtown.
The goal is for students to learn the skills they need to get a job, build a social life, travel, and do almost anything they want.
One of the instructors is Robin Tueting, who is partially blind, has 15 years of O&M experience, and is a two-time medalist at the Paralympic Games.
“I teach our students who are blind or have low vision, how to not only use a white cane and their residual vision to travel safely and navigate obstacles and things, but also to know where they are in space and get from where they are to where they need to be,” she explained.
One of her students is Stevie Zylstra, who began learning O&M at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The first time was online,” he recalled. “We talked about different things. Different terms we would hear when we came back in person — such as landmark, which is basically something that is always going to be there, that you can use to determine your location.”
Deaf students at the school have no similar training because their education focuses more on language skills.
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