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Touching and tapping through life
Friday, October 15, 1999 By Rachel Sobel, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
Christine Hunsinger leans her head back and strokes the face of her bumpy Seiko watch. It's almost 6:35 a.m. She walks swiftly around the coffee table in her pitch-black living room and says goodbye to her husband Doug, who is sitting with Val, his guide dog. With her long white cane in hand, Hinsinger nudges around for the door handle and heads toward the curves and sounds of the city.
She gracefully extends her arm and rhythmically moves the long cane -- right step, left touch, left step, right touch. She strolls across the lawn, poking the familiar cracks of her walkway. The cane's tip lands in the soft grass and she steadily veers back toward the concrete, coming to a pause at the corner of Brownsville and Garden roads in Brentwood.
There is no chirping audio signal here, no traffic light, no stop sign, no other pedestrians around. Just the random whir of cars. Hunsinger, who is totally blind, points her long cane into the crosswalk and calmly waits until she hears a break in the hum of cars going by. Then, she briskly crosses the street to the bus stop and shortly, the 46A arrives.
Like nearly half of the 10,200 legally blind people who live in Allegheny County, Hunsinger makes her way with a white cane, an aluminum rod wrapped in reflective tape with a flat handle and a Fiberglas tip.
Today is the day annually set aside to raise awareness of the challenges that blind pedestrians face. Since 1964, Oct. 15 has been nationally designated White Cane Safety Day.
"There is a percentage of our population who function every day without vision," says Richard L. Welsh, president of Pittsburgh Vision Services, who estimated that there are 5,000 white cane users in Allegheny County. "This day honors that and reminds people that this is something to be aware of."
Hunsinger wants more people to appreciate the daily encounters of a cane traveler -- on this day or any other.
"I wish people would respect my rights when I wave my cane around, and it doesn't always happen," she says.
From speeding drivers to inattentive pedestrians to accidents, the path of a cane traveler is no yellow brick road.
Once, a car sped around a corner and broke her cane. Another time, a pedestrian tripped over her cane and bent it, rendering it useless. In another incident, her cane got caught in a metal grate and slipped out of her hand into a sewer.
"Mornin', we got seats on both sides behind me," says the driver of the 46A. "Good morning," Hunsinger says as she pats around and finds a seat. She folds the cane into four parts and sits on it.
A few stops into the route, Donna Talak of Brentwood gets on. They've been riding the same route together for 14 months.
"I kinda missed you yesterday," Talak says.
"Well, gee, you know how the government is," Hunsinger replies with a smile, having enjoyed a restful, three-day Columbus Day weekend.
They chat about Talak's daughter, the shopping channel, audio museum tours, the stock market and Talak's recent mishap. She had fallen the day before while walking home from the bus stop and bruised her cheek.
"I guess you need a cane like me," Hunsinger jokes.
At Sixth and Wood, Downtown, they get off the bus and Hunsinger holds Talak's elbow as the two make their way together to Liberty Avenue, where Talak bids her farewell and goes to work.
Now Hunsinger is on her own and continues to the Social Security Administration office at 915 Penn Ave., where she has worked as a claims representative for seven years.
Without Talak, she runs into walls and collides with people who look apologetic or surprised or, sometimes, annoyed. But Hunsinger is nonchalant. She's used to the bruises, expects them, even. Fortunately, she has never needed stitches. The bumps are crucial to her navigation.
"Cane travel is a contact sport," Hunsinger says. "If you're doing it right, you're supposed to hit things."
At one corner, Hunsinger gets her cane stuck between a person's legs. The other pedestrian is startled and abruptly untangles himself. She's back in business.
On Ninth Street, a security guard greets her at a usual spot, the Catholic Charities building. Then, at the corner, she hears the traffic stop across Ninth and realizes she might be able to go.
But Hunsinger is extremely cautious, as she moves around a city where last year 309 pedestrian accidents occurred. Drivers who make right turns and those who make rights on red sometimes do not yield.
"I felt safer rock climbing than I feel on some street corners," she says, referring to a recent trip to Maryland.
Two blind pedestrians were killed in Pennsylvania in 1993, but there have no fatalities since then, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation.
Hunsinger stretches her long cane and starts the trek across Ninth. Next she crosses Penn, with the same poise and care. After some more patting and pushing, Hunsinger arrives at work.
Hunsinger rests her white cane under the desk and boots up her computer with its Braille refresher screen, a solid rectangular device with raised Braille characters that change with the cursor's location on the monitor.
In between note-taking on her Perkins Brailler, interviewing clients, and listening to her speech synthesizer, which reads the computer screen, Hunsinger explains why she won't need her white cane at work.
Like walking around at home, moving about the office is old hat. She knows the landscape -- the turns, the twists, the furniture -- and can feel it by "facial vision," the perception of reflected sound "heard" or felt by her face.
As she passes the coat rack on the way to the coffee room, Hunsinger senses how the echoes change. The coats absorb more of the vibrations from her footsteps so she knows to turn left toward the kitchen.
"It's almost like having someone stick their fingers in your ears," she explains.
On city streets, facial vision works in tandem with the white cane. The cane helps her evade people and walls while facial vision helps her sense where to turn on a sidewalk, as the reflection of sounds change from building to building.
Even with these aids, Hunsinger acknowledges that there are some major obstacles to cane travel. One of the most challenging is congested traffic. With cars in the crosswalk, Hunsinger can't tell if the traffic is stopped with a green light -- meaning it could move suddenly at any time -- or with a red light. She'll usually wait until the traffic clears or she'll approach a fellow pedestrian for help.
But when someone says, "OK, it's red, go ahead," this confuses her. Red for whom? Cars? What's more helpful, Hunsinger says, is telling her that it's safe to travel because the light is green.
She welcomes assistance from anyone, unless the person is inebriated or clearly confused. She'll accept help even if it's not needed because she hates to discourage anyone from helping someone in the future who really does need it.
Another challenge is dealing with curb cuts for wheelchairs. The gradual sloping can be misleading, and sometimes puts her out on the street without realizing it. Fortunately, many of Downtown's curb cuts are steep enough to signal that the sidewalk is ending.
Construction also throws Hunsinger and other cane travelers for a loop. She'll have to ask many questions and slowly learn the new route.
With these obstacles, a guide dog might be helpful. A dog knows when it's safe to cross a street and can thread a person through a construction site faster than a cane.
Although roughly 5 percent of blind people use guide dogs, Hunsinger holds fast to her cane. Dogs need to be fed and canes don't, she says. When visiting friends, she doesn't have to worry about whether they like dogs. And besides, there's already a dog around the house, her husband's yellow Labrador.
The white cane that Hunsinger depends upon has come a long way as a travel device. In the 1930s, the Lions Club of Peoria, Ill., proclaimed the white cane a symbol of independence for the visually impaired. This orthopedic-style cane was a short piece of painted wood, curved at the top, and was used primarily for leaning and support.
In the 1940s, a former teacher, Richard Hoover, stationed at the Valley Forge Hospital in Chester County, transformed the cane. He lengthened and lightened it so it was not just a symbol of independence but an indispensable tool to check the walking surface ahead.
In honor of White Cane Safety Day, the Lions Club typically raises funds outside shopping centers and grocery stores in Pittsburgh and the surrounding area. Other groups, like the Golden Triangle Council of the Blind, hand out pamphlets and send faxes to boost awareness and appreciation of the blind.
When it's time to go home, Hunsinger cheerfully picks up her white cane and eases her way into the great outdoors. It's another rush hour and the people are staring, smiling and jumping to avoid her cane.
She hears another cane traveler and crosses paths with him, but they don't speak to each other.
"What am I supposed to say? 'Hey, blind person?' " Hunsinger jokes.
She catches the 51C and asks the bus driver to tell her when they get to Garden Road. After a while, she worries that he forgot.
"Nope," he replies. "We're approaching Garden right now."
At the bus stop, she pokes around, trying to figure out exactly where the bus dropped her. A few feet or few yards can make a big difference. "It's always a surprise where they let me off," she says.
But today, like any other day, Hunsinger, white cane in hand, finds her way.
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Contact sport