Description of graphical content is included between Description Start and Description End. Transcript Start [ Music ] [ Title: ] International O&M Online Symposium Welcome [ Title: ] International O&M Online Symposium Analyzing Street Crossings - Part 1 Dona Sauerburger: Well, hi, everyone. And welcome. I'm Dona Sauerburger, an orientation mobility specialist here in Maryland. I'm really, really excited about this session, as it covers a topic that I've been passionate about for-- ever since my blind friends and colleagues were killed in an uncontrolled crossing almost 30 years ago. Since that happened, I have written, I've conducted research, and did almost 100 workshops and presentations on this topic, I'm especially pleased about this one because it is the first and only one of done online of distinguished colleagues from around the world. The orientation and mobility specialists joining me are Josee Martin and Denise Guitar, French Canadians in New Brunswick. Nandini Menon in Bangalore, India and Kassandra Maloney, the groundbreaking innovator from Austin, Texas who dreamed up this amazing forum. I will take this opportunity to send a huge kudos and thank you to Kassy and the Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired for making this happen. And then we just-- we just-- oh. [ Laughter ]. Sorry about that. Let me just check in and make sure that everyone can hear me and see me. Are we good? All right. Yeah, okay. So the plan for this session is for me to explain what the heck this is all about. And by the way, this is the first of two sessions on street crossings around the world. The second one will be at the end of today's program and it will focus on crossing of traffic signals. So the plan for this session is for me to explain what the heck we're talking about, including features and considerations of uncontrolled crossings and then you're going to have to get your passport ready because we're going to be traveling to see crossings in the United States with Kassy Malone and in Austin, Texas and then in India with Nandini Nandini and then Josee Martin and Denise Guitar in New Brunswick. This is condensing about five hours of materials into 15 minutes, so I wouldn't be surprised if you have some questions about it. Let me assure you that it's all explained in great detail in a free online self‑study guide preparing visually impaired students for uncontrolled crossings and that's at www. Sauerburger.org/Dona/crosscredit. It offers five hours of ACVRP credit. Since everything is covered there, I won't be taking any questions on that material. But after speech presenter has shared her crossings, we will have a few minutes for questions or comments that you submit on the chat box. Since we have so much ground to cover, literally, this session, we have set aside from time at the end of Part 2 of the session later today to answer questions that were not addressed during this session. So ... let's begin with what the heck do we mean by uncontrolled crossing. We mean crossings that don't have a stop sign or a traffic signal for the vehicles in that crossing. For example in the first picture here on the left, shows the back of a very handsome man, I happen to be related to him but only my marriage. Standing at an intersection. There's a stop sign, but no stop sign or traffic signal for the street he's facing and wanting to cross. The street he's facing is what we call an uncontrolled crossing. Another example of an uncontrolled crossing is a roundabout, which is shown in the second picture there. Where my friend is crossing the lane where the drivers leave the circle part of the roundabout, again, no stop sign or traffic signal for those drivers, so that is an uncontrolled crossing. And the last example, of an intersection that does have a traffic signal, but there's a turning lane that is separated from the rest of the intersection with an island, and so the traffic in that separate lane, that turning lane, has no spot sign and the drivers can ignore the traffic signal so it's another uncontrolled crossing. Both signalized intersections in Part 2 of these have these separate turning lanes, so the presenters will be analyzing them as uncontrolled crossings. So let's start by putting on our thinking caps and asking when do you want to cross at these uncontrolled crossings? The best time is when it's clear to cross. But to be confident it's clear to cross, you need to be able to hear-- you need to be able to hear or see if you are using your vision, all of the approaching vehicles, with enough warning time. By warning time, I mean the time from when you first hear or see a vehicle until it arrives at your crossing. For example, if it takes you seven seconds to cross, you need to be able to hear or see the approaching vehicles when they are at least seven seconds away. It's that simple. If you can't hear or see what's coming until they are less than seven seconds away, you can never be sure that it's clear to cross because whenever it seems to be clear, there could be a car coming that could reach you before you finish your crossing. To figure out-- there's enough-- if there's enough warning time, you need to compare the warning time of the approaching vehicles with the time that you need for crossing. For example, if you are using your hearing, you would listen for vehicles coming from the left to the right and ask yourself was the warning time of those vehicles longer or shorter than my crossing time? The direction of the vehicle that's coming will determine if you should compare the warning time with the time you need to cross just half the street for vehicles approaching from the-- from the left in America. Or the entire street. You will see Nandini explain in India it needs to be clear for crossing the entire street regardless of which direction the vehicles are coming from and she'll explain why. So after observing the approaching vehicles, and their warning time in that situation, by the way this can change, I'll talk about that in a minute. In that situation, you ask yourself whether or not the range of warning times for the vehicles that are approaching is long enough for you to be confident as to whether it's clear to cross when it's quiet. Now, students need to be able to make the comparison and assess the situation without any stop watches. They need to be able to do it intuitively on a gut level. As you can imagine, for you to be able to assess these situations and teach our students to assess them on an intuitive level, it's complicated and we won't cover any of that in this session, but like I said it is all covered in the self‑study guide. In this session we are going to look at the main features of controlled crossings in different countries. Let's see. Somehow-- there we go. Range of warning times not long enough to know when to cross we call a situation of uncertainty. This example, a quiet residential street, speed limit of 25 miles an hour, there's a sharp bend to the right. This is one of the crossings well Dr. Rob Emmerson and I did our research. It takes about seven seconds to cross. When we show you the video you cannot hear or see most of the vehicles approaching from the right and only four to six seconds away. If you could load up the video, please, and start that. We can hear the vehicle now. It arrives now. Okay. So here-- we're going to look at it again. There you go again. All right. If we could get back to the PowerPoint. All right. Good. Okay. So-- so when the range of warning time is long enough to know whether it's clear to cross, what do we call that? That is a situation of confidence. And I'm going to show you another example of-- example of that. When we start the video, we're going to see a two‑lane highway that's in front of my community with a speed limit of 55 miles or almost 60 kilometers per hour, again a sharp bend in the road to the right, again it takes about seven seconds for the average pedestrian to cross. Vehicles just passed us. Going away. We will wait until it gets quiet. [Traffic sounds]. It just got quiet. I hear a car from the right. That vehicle that I heard passes us. Still can't see it. Now we can see it. Passes us-- now. That was 13 seconds. That was 13 seconds from when we heard it. I have measured the warning times for dozens of approaching vehicles there, I could hear all of them from seven to 23 seconds away, so we can be confident when it's quiet and we hear no vehicles coming, it's clear to cross. All right. Let's get back to our PowerPoint. Now, really, really important. Okay. Thanks. It's very, very important that your students, you and your students realize that crossings can be situations of uncertainty at some times and situations of confidence at other times. For example, you can hear vehicles much earlier when the roads are wet than you can when they are dry. And a parked vehicle may block the sound temporarily. And I'm going to let you in on a little secret that explained a lot of mysteries to me. The sound level of quiet changes. For example, when it's quiet in the City, so-- so eight times noisier than when it's quiet in the suburbs. When it's quiet in the suburbs, it's twice as noisy as when it's quiet in a farm out on the country. Here's the kicker. At most places, when it's quiet in the afternoon, it's four times noisier than it is when it's quiet at night. I'm going to show you an example. A crossing-- oops, we don't want to start that yet. Hold on a second. Crossing along this two‑lane highway is where Gordon Park and his guide dog were killed. A few weeks after they were killed I went to listen for the approaching vehicles. At 8:00 on a Saturday night when it was quiet, I could hear all of them several blocks away. But when I took this video that we're going to look at, it was-- it was about 3:00 Friday afternoon, I couldn't hear the approaching vehicles when it was quiet until they were four second away. Let's go ahead and see the video. Thanks. [Video]. So I hear nothing coming. I hear something. Now. It passed right now. That was only four seconds. And that's about-- four seconds-- if Gordon had started just before had he heard that, started to cross, if he had started to cross just before he heard that, he would have been four seconds into his crossing and right where he actually was killed. So I suspect that it was the same condition as it was when he heard it or when he crossed. All right. We're going to go back to the PowerPoint. I just want to emphasize situations can change. If Gordon had, look at that on a Saturday night like I did, he would have thought it's quiet, you have enough warning. But that wasn't the case. The time that I took that video. All right. So your students need to be able to assess situations and recognize when they are in a situation of uncertainty naturally, intuitively. And there's a tool that you as their instructor can use to provide them with feedback. It's called a timing method for assessing the detection of vehicles or TMAD. TMAD as some call it. The self‑study guide that I told you has a checklist for using the TMAD and judging if it's a situation of uncertainty or not. Your students shouldn't be using this, it's only for you to provide feedback. I want to give a shout out to Jolene Troisi, she-- from the University of Pittsburgh for designing that checklist based on using it with her university students. Her O&M students. All right. So when you find yourself in a situation of uncertainty, now what? I'm sorry, we have-- what? Okay. So when you find yourself in a situation of uncertainty-- you first analyze the risks and there's a checklist in the self‑study guide to help you analyze the risks. Then you decide if that risk is acceptable. In other words, if it's safe. If not, you use alternatives. So let's take a look at the-- analyzing the risks. We're going to look at three things. First of all, how likely is there a vehicle coming that you didn't realize was there? And that depends on two things. The traffic volume and how much warning time you have. Secondly, if there is a vehicle coming, that you didn't realize was coming, how likely is it going to hit you? Factors that can affect that are listed on the next slide. Then third, if it hits you, how likely will you be seriously injured or killed? That depends on the speed, there's a chart that you can use for that. Let's go through the factors that would affect whether or not the driver would hit you. Multiple lanes for the drivers going fast. More likely you are going to be hit. Less likely if expecting pedestrians, visibility is good, road conditions good, group of pedestrians crossing, waiting with foot in the street, using a cane, the culture of drivers in the community. These are all covered in the self‑study guide for uncontrolled crossings that I told you about. I urge you to learn about it because it is critically important to your students. I will give you one quick but dramatic example. We don't have time to show this video, but there is-- there is video that is in the self‑study guide showing a woman who has enough vision, I just started working with her, she was still using her vision and didn't have a cane and I asked her to turn and look for approaching vehicles. And she-- she missed-- she turned her head slowly, but had restricted visual field but not slow enough. Two cars come by and she misses seeing both of them. So we're not going to show that video, but it's there and I bring this up to emphasize the importance of you learning to teach our students to make these kind of crossings. So I'm very excited to tell you about the American Printing House for the blind also has a program that can help you teach these skills and concepts to your students using simulation and videos. So ... okay. Now that you understand the basic concepts. We can start the fun part of our session. And see some uncontrolled crossings around the world. If you have any questions or comments about what they are presenting, just write it in the chat box. And they can address them at the end of their presentation or during Part 2 of our session at [indiscernible] hours from now. We're going to see our video anyway. All right. Or not. I'm sorry. Anyway, I assume not. So-- so we're going to start right here in the United States with Kassy Malone who graduated as with orientation and mobility, now works for the Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired. I don't know how she manages to do that while raising two little boys with her husband and find time to do things like organizing this amazing symposium and write her book, yoga for children with visual and multiple impairments published by the Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired in 2016. So thank you Kassy for doing this. And thank you for sharing your crossing with us today. So take it away. Intersection when we just-- let me just explain it a little bit, then we will get into some pictures, so my intersection is in the-- in the middle of Austin, not really downtown, kind of like Midtown. It's in this perfect little beautiful residential neighborhood that's bordered by small business areas with busier streets. It's like an O&M playground. You guys would love it. I have always loved this neighborhood except in this one street crossing. And it always just seemed really scary. For my students and we're in a residential setting, so we don't have to cross it, you know. So-- so it is an offset intersection, I will start to find my documents right now. So it's an offset intersection. Going north and south, that name of that street is called Duval road and then east and west it's 43rd street. So it's like barely offset. I will show you a couple of pictures so you can see what I'm talking about. Okay. What about-- the other one? I'm sorry, I can't see my files in the room. Let's see, great, cool. This is from the northwest corner. It's-- it's really hard to see but you can see that-- that there are cross walks, at least on all three, at least three other sides. Can we show another picture. I'm sorry, I can't-- I can't see how the-- to show my own pictures. Our AV team is amazing. I don't know how to work this. I have gone out to this intersection many times, the one day that I went out it was so dreary, not so fun to be outside. You will see more about that during the video. But you can see-- I will try to draw something on here, since I have this cool technology. You can see this road, and what we are looking at right now is from the-- from the southwest corner of this intersection, we're looking at the road that's kind of catty corner from us with the north and south street going away from us, but not straight, but a little bit to the left from the angle that we're looking at it. Then you can also see 43rd street, I'm going to move the little cursor for those of you with vision, 43rd street is right here, then it juts to-- to over here. Can we show the picture of the northwest corner? I did want you to see there are lots of businesses around, even though the speed limit is 35 miles an hour, cars still go pretty fast. Have you ever been in those situations where you're like, oh. you don't see any pictures, Jeri? That I don't know. Okay. We need to go-- okay. So-- so let me see if I can do this. Thank you guys for your patience. Now I can see exactly what I need to do. Thank you to our AV team for letting me know how to do that. Okay. Now we're going to go to the actual analyzing part of it. I think you guys have a good understanding of what-- what happens there. Okay. All right. So let's go to-- to a video. I'm sorry, Andy, I don't see the video. Okay, perfect, I'm going to pause this real quick. Just so you know, there's going to be a little-- a little shadow on the left. When I went out, this is not necessarily the day I was planning to go out. But I had a student cancellation and so I didn't have plans for like a videographer to come with me at that time, I just decided I needed to get these videos and I need to go out now. It was like 30 something degrees, the people had already done their videos, no excuses, but it was freezing. So I tried to keep my gloves you. You will see my glove in there. I apologize for that. What this video is going to show is we're going to actually pan around to the intersection and then we'll stop and we'll analyze it and then get your guys' opinion about whether you think this is a situation of confidence or a situation of uncertainty. And I will also let you know that I'll-- I will give you the-- the amount of time that it took for me to hear the car live time because when they reviewed it before, before this presentation, the camera part of it cut off about like four seconds for each. So-- so it takes a proficient crosser about 10 seconds to cross this: Two bike lanes, but one lane each way. It's a pretty straightforward crossing as long as you are lined up correctly, so we are taking all of the offset crossing parts out of this and we're just looking at the warning times, just so you know. Let me know if you can't hear the video, okay, guys. It's a pretty straightforward crossing as long as you are lined up correctly. [indiscernible] offset crossing part out of it. Just looking at the warning signs. Just so you know. Okay. Let's go ahead and-- and play it. Let me know if you can't hear the video. Okay, guys. [indiscernible]. Made a big difference before, so I'm going down to the bottom, I will be quiet so we can listen together. Really hasn't gotten quiet yet. It takes a little bit of time. Then you'll notice that the first car that comes, it-- it pauses for me. Okay. So that guy totally paused for me and threw it off. But then the next car-- let me try to pause it again here. Okay. I might just let this play through. So instead of talking now, I'm just going to-- [Echoing]. I'm going to talk through all of this and then we can make these decisions together, okay? Hopefully I have this right. Oh! Oh, my gosh. [echoing]. Okay. I'm going to let this play through. The first car, we're only going to watch this for five minutes. Now the first car, comes and is-- in a white car, if you saw it earlier, it stopped for me, totally threw it off. It would have been over 12 seconds that I would have heard it from the left side. But it stopped, it was over 15 seconds. Then we're going to wait a little bit more time for it to actually get quiet again. And then in this intersection you will notice that there's like a car that comes, one right after another. What I did for-- for this presentation and I just like stopped and waited until it got all the way as quiet as it was going to get. Again, which doesn't happen until the next-- in the next few seconds. And then you'll notice that there's a white car across the street that's right now at a gas station. It's going to pull out and go through perpendicular or the parallel not perpendicular. And then after that, there is going to be a blue car that comes from the left as well. And in the video, see if you can listen, if it's quiet where you are, because in the video it sounds like it's about eight seconds. It takes about five seconds to get to the middle. But in real‑time, it was about 12 seconds. So hopefully you can hear that. And then after that, there's-- there's a car that has a bunch of different colors on it. That comes by, also, from the left. And-- and that one actually-- I heard it from about seven seconds away. I don't know what the difference in the car was or why. But-- then we have a bus that comes through, doesn't count. And then after that we have a black Jeep that I heard from about 10 seconds away. But in the video you can hear it from about six seconds away. So go ahead and I'm going to mute myself, everything, and then play the video so that you guys can hear it. Okay? [Video]. [Traffic sounds on video]. Okay. So what do you think? Situation of uncertainty or situation of confidence? Write it in the chat, thank you so much for your time and I'm going to pass it back to Dona. Okay. Do you hear me now? Can you hear me okay? Yes, yes, all right, very good. Thank you so much, Kassy. It was an interesting observation. I think that you said you had timed the approached warning time of a lot of vehicles, is that right? Can you speak as well as I? I guess not. Anyway, there is a checklist that-- that I mentioned for determining if it's a situation of confidence or not. And kind of thanks to Jolene. It's going-- takes you to kind of a-- what do you call a flow chart so that if the warning time is less than your crossing time, the conclusion is that it's a situation of uncertainty. If-- [ echoing audio]. There we go. Okay. Kassy, I'll go ahead and just explain how it's done, but I think you said that it was-- you had measured and gone through the little checklist and determined that it was a situation of confidence. And the nice thing is with this checklist is that-- that it helps you kind of-- figure out how to collect the data to-- to be able to determine if it's a situation of confidence or not. You look at the range of warning times, if it's too close to your crossing time, it's a situation of uncertainty. If it's-- if the range is really tight and it's a lot longer than your crossing time, it's a situation of confidence. So that's-- that chart kind of helps to-- to help you determine that. So we're going to go ahead and-- and I don't know if we have time for questions. Yeah. Any questions, Kate? Or Andy, have you been monitoring that? While we're listening-- go ahead. I did notice one question about quiet cars, that's all addressed in the self‑study guide. Not an issue unless they are going slower than-- well, I won't get into all of that. It's all explained in the self‑study guide. So we're going to now fly-- fly to India where Nandini for us, an orientation and mobility instructor, a teacher for children who are visually impaired living in bang although India, Bangalore Indiana. After completing her master's she moved back to India to help make a difference in the education of children who are visually impaired. She works at the education academy, which is one of the few schools that includes students with disabilities. She has conducted numerous workshops for-- thank you for sharing with us today. Take it away. Hi, everyone, can you hear me? Okay. Great. Traffic is in India is quite chaotic to say the least. Can you see me now? You can hear me, right? That's good. Hi. Okay. Great. So-- so the traffic in India is very chaotic. Not many people really follow the rules. We're going to take a look at the video I took and-- and you will get an idea of really what traffic is like in India and how-- how hard it is for pedestrians. Let alone people with visual impairment to travel in India independently. We're going to take a look at that video now. [Video playing]. [No sound]. [Video playing ‑ no sound for first portion of video] They are doing 10 to 15 kilometers an hour as they get towards me. So getting hit or injured, the chance is seriously low but I am hearing them as I cross because of the residual noise around me. Okay. So I see the chat room has exploded from my video, but let's go over some of the risk of what was my likelihood of being surprised as I crossed that road, and it's quite high because there's a lot of ambient noise. It doesn't get very quiet as you see in the video. There is a high volume of traffic. It doesn't really-- there isn't like a pause in the traffic where you can figure out if there's enough time to cross it. The other problem is the likelihood of being hit. There actually isn't any lane system followed in most parts of India, so what happens is even if it is a two‑lane road, there could possibly be bikes in between them so it would work out to be three or four lane somehow. The cars are going relatively slow here, so in India and in most parts of Bangalore, you can't go very fast when they see a pedestrian crossing the road. The other is the expectation of drivers when we are crossing. People who are driving in India typically drive defensively because there's so many unexpected things that-- like cows, people crossing the street, running through red lights. So people tend to drive more cautiously, and that works in our favor as well. Some of the things, how do we overcome these risks while crossing or what are the alternatives to crossing? Most people in India use-- other than using a cane, they will also use their non‑cane hand to flag or wave out or to get the drivers' attention so that people who are driving can see that someone is trying to cross the road. The other thing they do is get public assistance. If we can get that started. Can you see me now? Okay. Great. Yeah. So public assistance is another way that people often cross extremely busy or difficult intersections. And you can gather usually enough people around that you would find someone to help you cross the road. The other thing that I've often seen happen is drivers-- if there's no other pedestrian and there's a person with a cane at an intersection, I can seen drivers, cars and rickshaws and sometimes bus conductors, they are people who hand out tickets on the buses in India. We don't have just a bus driver. So they will get out of the vehicle and actually help the person cross the road, even if it means stopping traffic for a couple of minutes. The other thing that people will often do is they cross the street where there is a traffic light instead of crossing red. It's slightly difficult like this intersection. They would probably cross at a place with better traffic control and sometimes that even means not crossing at the intersection, but it could mean crossing near a place that has a speed breaker because then people will definitely slow down. And a lot of people who have spoken-- they prefer to cross where it's less noisy, but there is a speed breaker so they are sure that the cars will have to slow down. Surprisingly enough people do yield to a person when they're using a cane. And I have seen that happen very often. The people with low vision, when I was talking to them, they said that one of the things they do is look out to see if another pedestrian is crossing and then walk with them. So these are some of the alternatives to crossing in India. Does anybody have any questions? For me so far? I'm going to hand it back to Dona. Thank you so much, Nandini. That was fascinating and I love all the alternatives that you suggested. There's a lot of discussion going on in the chat room. I can't quite keep up with it. A lot of people are talking about would it make a difference moving the cane in some particular way. Have you noticed, Nandini, that the drivers ‑‑ You actually did receive a question. Sorry, I didn't notice that. What was the question? The speed breaker is a speed bump, if that was the question. That's what we call bumps in India. And waving the cane is something that people do here to get people's attention. So with the non‑cane hand they will actually wave out with the traffic and use their cane, so they use both. Do you find that that helps? The drivers tend to pay attention to the cane? Yeah. Very often you will see people on motor vehicles or bikes get-- on motorcycles or bikes get off and help the person across the road if they have no pedestrian standing next to them. It definitely gets people's attention. And it looks like that's another way maybe of getting help, although it likes like there's no-- there's no lack of pedestrians who might be able to help. Wonderful, Nandini. Thank you so much. This was great. All right. We're going to jump to our next visit, which is in New Brunswick, Canada. And we had thought that we would not have time for a lot of questions, and so as I said, we're hoping that in the second session that we'll have some time to bring up some discussions. And I know Dr. Gene Bourquin, I know he's done a lot of research with seeing the effect of canes and different behaviors on drivers yielding. So he will probably share some of that with us. So we're going to go ahead and jump to Canada with Josee Martin and Denise Guitar, who are mobility specialists that work Francophone, French speaking students, for the Department of Education and early childhood development in New Brunswick. Denise has been working as an orientation specialist since 1989 either at the Department of Early Childhood Development or at the Blind Foundation in New Zealand. She has a teaching degree from the University [indiscernible] and a post grad mobility degree from the University de Sherbrooke. Since 2017 she's also a teacher of students with vision loss. Josee got her degree in Ontario in 2002 and rehabilitation teacher in 2006. And after working at the Canadian National Institute for the Blind, she has been working with the Department of Early Childhood Development since 2008. She currently enjoys working in New Brunswick as an orientation mobility specialist. I had the pleasure of working with Denise and Josee when they were teaching their students about these uncontrolled crossings and was very, very impressed and learned a lot. So I was delighted when they agreed to share with us what they're doing now. So take it away, ladies. [¶ Music ¶]. [speaking French]. There we go. Can everybody hear us? We'll go on the presumption that you can hear us. Josee will be my technical assistant [Garbled audio]. Is that it? We do have a headset, but [ Inaudible ]. She won't be able to hear and she needs to do that. So hi, everybody and thank you for the intro and for inviting us [indiscernible]. Josee and I-- Can you hear me now? Our headset is not working unfortunately. [indiscernible]. We can't get the speaker-- you have to select the headset for the microphone. [No audio]. It's best that we watch the video because we're running out of time and when your mic comes on you can begin narrating, but there's plenty of narration in the video. Let's begin. [Overlapping audio]. They do this by assessing the number of lanes there are. If you would like to see a video of students assessing the width of the street, please see this YouTube video. If you would like to learn more about this skill, please refer to the following link. The students who are in this video have already gotten the skill to assess the number of lanes using vision and hearing. [Overlapping audio]. [Speaking French]. [Overlapping audio]. After making sure there are no cars coming, the instructor gives a signal to the student that it's time to cross. When the student takes that first step, the instructor starts the stopwatch. When the student arrives on the other side the instructor stops the time. [Traffic sounds]. The student [indiscernible] coming back from the other side of the street. [Speaking French]. The instructor and student discuss the time required to cross the street. This is a good indication of [indiscernible]. The instructor offers the student [indiscernible] for crossings until they feel comfortable. [Cars passing]. [Traffic sounds]. The instructor explains to the student [indiscernible] the crossing. [Traffic sounds]. To help improve the time of crossing and now that the student has assessed the width of the street, the instructor now asks the student to imagine themselves crossing the street, telling the instructor when they start and finish the imaginary crossing. [Traffic sounds]. If she is accurate or not by comparing-- The instructor will tell the student if she is accurate or not by comparing the time of crossing to the imaginary time of crossing. [Traffic sounds]. We start the exercise ‑‑ [Speaking French]. The student tells the instructor when she thinks she hears a vehicle. Instructor starts the stopwatch. When the car arrives in front of the student, the instructor starts timing-- stops timing. [Speaking French]. [Traffic sounds]. [Speaking French]. [Traffic sounds]. [Speaking French]. [Traffic sounds]. The instructor and student [indiscernible] to arrival time with the time the student needs to cross the street. [Traffic sounds]. Remember to discuss with the student the buffer time that needs to be added to the crossing time. For example, if the student takes six seconds to cross a street, how many seconds do they add to the crossing time before the vehicle reaches them? The student [indiscernible] until both are comfortable. The process is the same for students using vision. [Traffic sounds]. [Speaking French]. The student asks the following questions: Is it a situation of uncertainty or is it a situation of confidence? If it's a situation of confidence, the student will cross the street. If it's a situation of uncertainty, the student will analyze the risk. They can refer to the risk analysis for the situation of uncertainty checklist. Is the risk acceptable to the student? If it is, the student will cross the street. If the risk is not acceptable to the student, the student will consider alternatives such as using a sign to ask for help in crossing, move further on the street to analyze the traffic, or use a controlled intersection further down the street. You can see the website alternatives when crossing is too risky. [Traffic sounds]. In this situation of uncertainty, the student chose to use a sign to ask drivers for help in crossing the street. When a driver gets out of their car and walks toward the student to help. [¶ Music ¶]. What they're out there for is to find out-- to teach them to be able to recognize if they can be confident that it's clear to cross or not. If they cannot be confident that it's clear to cross then they need to look at things like making the drivers more likely to yield or avoiding the crossing or getting some help, et cetera. Still no sound? No way for you to be heard? Somebody had been asking what is the website that they were referring to and it is the self‑study guide which is www.sauerburger.org. There you are. Can you say something? [indiscernible]. Still muffled. You need to go to the box and use microphone instead of telephone, but we can hear you. So go ahead and speak. We've done that. I can hear you fine, so why don't you go ahead and talk. Okay. [indiscernible]. They were asking about the use of the cane. I would also like if you could talk a little bit about helping to cross from the drivers. Yes. The student in the video obviously was a bit of a setup because she was by herself and she's only 10 years old, she didn't want to try it by herself. But [indiscernible]. They used the sign and the cars invariably, a driver will stop, get out and help them across the street that they need to cross. We have to coach them on what to do because they're not always aware of what they need to do because they're learning the skills, not doing a true crossing as it is. When we go back and work individually with them in their home towns and villages, and yes, we do-- they do the real thing [indiscernible]. Whether they have a cane or not, the drivers do stop and help them across. This is Dona. Actually-- and the whole point of you going out there was not to get the drivers to stop, but to teach the students the skills so that they can determine if they need to get the drivers to stop. You had wanted to talk a little bit about working with groups. Do you want to share that right now in the few minutes that we have left? Sure. As you know we've been doing these courses to do with uncontrolled street crossings since 24. What we have observed with the students is that there's a lot more willingness for them to try things and to do things that they don't necessarily want to do [indiscernible]. And there's a lot of peer mentoring that happens amongst the group, which is really nice. And so some of the students, for example, won't use the binoculars in their village or town or their canes for that matter or they won't ask for help necessarily. When they come with other people, with other students with vision impairment and they know and see that-- that it's something that the group does, then they go back into their communities and there's a lot more willingness and they know they're not the only ones that are doing that, because they don't like to be different, but when they are associated with the group and the group does it, then there's connection. Thank you. This is Dona. I saw that in action. I went to two of your workshops. And the dynamics in the groups was fantastic. You can see a that on my website. I will post it in the chat. www.sauerburger/newb. You can see the kids there and how the dynamics work and I was amazed and really impressed. And we are finishing now so we're going to-- I want to thank everybody for participating in this. [ Title: ] International O&M Online Symposium Thank you [ Music ] Fade to black.