TRANSCRIPT - Traveling to Transition and Beyond: O&M for Ages (15-64) Ð 10/16/23

>>Andrew: Thank you, Kaycee. Welcome, everyone. Thank y'all for joining us. So, Kaycee asked me to come on here and kind of talk about a little bit what I do here at work. My name is Andrew Bernet. I am a blind O&M. I have my COMS. And I work at the Criss Cole Rehabilitation Center here in Austin, Texas, just right across the street from TSB. We do actually -- we start working with individuals once they're typically 18 during the regular regular year, but during the summer we do have transition programs where we kind of do specialized training on working towards a job placement. Criss Cole is underneath Texas Workforce Commission and so everyone that is receiving services from us ultimately is either trying to go to college, get a job, or retain a job. So that's the big focus with our training here. Kind of starting off with the younger individuals that we work with during the summer, the two trainings that we had this past summer where we worked with them was we had a college prep session, which happened beginning of June on University of Texas campus. We had the students live in the dorms and basically, they took a college class, much abbreviated. It wasn't a full-on class but something to give them an idea of what it was like taking an actual college class. And then throughout the day we also worked on the various areas of training that we provide here at Criss Cole. Those mainly being O&M, daily living skills, technology, and career guidance. Career guidance was more of a focus, since it was a college prep camp, more so on interacting with disability services office or basically applying for financial aid, different things like that. Making sure that they had good organization techniques to take a class. During that O&M part, in particular, which is what I was there to help out with, we had a blast getting to take them all around campus and kind of teach them a couple of tricks, kind of give them real-world application of finding different locations on campus. We didn't take them around and give them a tour of the campus and that had more to do with how we typically approach training here at the center. Since we do get them for quite sometime when they come to training here, we tend to take more of a questioning approach to them where it's more of a discussion. We definitely do teach specific techniques but once they have those techniques, we try to just really pick random places and go around on a regular basis. And that area, in particular, that's one thing that I really like to dive into with my students, especially because I am a blind traveler. So, whenever we come up to different type of travel environments, travel situations, whether it be intersections, construction, college campus, in particular for our college prep group that we had, then we would -- they would ask a question and do the typical O&M response and respond with another question. But the way that I would turn it more into a conversation with them would be to ask them what things they were noticing. And I would point out to them different things that I was noticing. And together we would have a conversation about what would be the most effective way to proceed. Whether it was being lost in the middle of campus, riding the bus around campus, finding different landmarks on campus, finding little cut-throughs. How you would even orient yourself to the campus when you first got there. If you weren't able to receive services from an O&M. In addition to that program, we also did a more work-focused program. Again, we had the students stay -- not in the same dorm but another dorm on the University of Texas campus. And they were there for about a week's worth of orientation. And then for two more weeks after that we were able to get them all volunteer experiences that they actually got paid for. And they would have a job coach going around with them to each of the individual sites. Basically, getting to see what it would be like being out on their own. Being away from mom and dad and having to manage their time. Get to work on time, budget so that they could find out that it wasn't necessarily going to be realistic for them in most situations to go out and buy lunch every day. Either financially or even just time management-wise. So, they really got to get an introduction to living independently through that camp. That program was actually called Star. It was a little acronym that stood for summer transitional accelerated rehabilitation. Let's see if there's any questions real quick on chat before we move forward. All right. Cool. So that's really the main way that we work with individuals that are younger than 18 here at the Criss Cole Center. I believe that the youngest that we take to those two programs has typically been around 16 or 17. Students end up getting referred to the programs by their transition counselor, wherever they're living at in Texas. Beyond that, we also work with adults starting at age 18. In order to come to our center, they do have to be considered legally blind. But once they come here, they're here for training 40 hours a week. It's a full workweek. It's pretty intensive. I see a question about if there is a curriculum for the students that were attending the summer sessions. There was. In general, it depended on the program. With the STAR program it was more focused towards them actually going and working in the second two weeks. The first week was really just getting them used to the campus and making sure that they were comfortable with public transit, getting back and forth, whether it be paratransit or the fixed routes. During the college prep program, typically we would have one or two of our main focus areas, those four being career guidance, O&M, daily living skills, and technology. They would have two of those in the morning. It's split up. We would have lunch. They would have their college course and then we would alternate with the other two special training areas. We also would give them nice little rec activities to have a way to decompress. All while focusing on adjustment to blindness. I have a question about do we use blindfold during all of our training? Actually during our summer programs we did not require any of the students to wear blindfolds. Here at the Criss Cole Center we do actually encourage the blindfold training but it is not a requirement that students wear the blindfold during the training. There is one class -- well, there's two that are the only two that actually require students to wear a blindfold in them. That's industrial arts. They go through and learn how to do various household, maintenance, fixing leaky sinks, fixing toilets, changing out doorknobs and locks on doors, repairing a lamp. Ultimately, they do end up putting together a final project and are fully set-up woodworking shop. That's typically a month to a month and a half when they first get here to the center. That class, they are required to wear a blindfold, mainly because the focus of that class really isn't the woodworking, it's more of the confidence building that happens in that class. The other class that we do require blindfolds to be worn here at the center is we offer a seminar class. Right now, we do it once a month and it's a two-hour session. And the whole focus of seminar is addressing questions that come up when different individuals are adjusting to that loss of vision, whether it be a partial loss or a total loss. Whether it's a new rapid decline in their vision or if it's something that they really have been dealing with for a while. We like to get many opposing viewpoints in those seminar classes to really kind of really discuss the different places that people are so that everyone can kind of learn from each other where they're at with their adjustment to blindness. So, yeah, those are the main things as far as the programs. Typically, we get to see them. It's pretty nice for O&M. We get them for about 10 hours a week, which you can imagine would be pretty intense. We do not require them to wear blindfolds for the training but we highly encourage it. The majority of our students do end up choosing to stay underneath a blindfold for the entirety of their training. We have a few students who, due to shunts where they'll wear more occluders as opposed to the blindfold. They don't have to worry about irritating the shunts in their eyes from rubbing their eye due to the blindfold sitting on it or causing their eyes to itch at all Is to make that they -- someone is able to get a job or retain their job. We do -- here at the center we're more focused on trying to get them to a point where they're ready to go out and try and find a job at that point. Where they're employable, not necessarily having a job. Some students that come to our center do end up acquiring jobs while they are here at training. But typically, we're just trying to give them the tools they need to go out and get a job, whether that's having the tools to research a job or actually just going out and knowing how to present themselves as competent blind adults. Eric is asking if we have a GED program. We do not. However, we do set people up and put them in connection, help them research different programs around here where they can get their GED. We do have some individuals that enroll in ESL class while they're here. We also have a lot of students who work on some of the core classes or even remedial classes and math and English at Austin Community College nearby. So, kind of the O&M part. One of the things I really like about being able to work with the individuals that come to our center here and the way that our O&M program is set up here for training is first and foremost there's a large number of us. There's actually 12 O&Ms just in our department. And there's -- I believe last I checked there's about two or three other O&Ms in our building that aren't teaching O&M but they do have that knowledge to pull on. We really like to try and focus on cross-training as much as possible. So, while I'm doing an O&M lesson with one of my students, I'm also teaching them things like how to use VoiceOver on their own or talk back so that they can really make use of the apps that are out there. I like to tell all my students that my phone is kind of like my blind Swiss Army Knife. There's a lot of critical thinking that happens in our O&M classes but we also have the luxury of being able to really have that extended time with them. Again, they're receiving about 10 hours of O&M a week, on average. Occasionally we will have students that will receive more than that, just because their schedule allows them to have two periods of O&M during the day. As opposed to just the one two-hour session that most people end up taking. Some people receive a little bit less, depending on where they're at in their training. They might be doing a volunteer work experience program. They might be doubling up on some technology. But we really do try and customize it to what the individual person needs. I myself have noticed one thing that really tends to benefit me, as a blind traveler, is really being able to make sure that I'm in shape enough to make traveling easy. By being in shape, I do mean physical but also cognitively there. I want to make sure that stamina is up with my students. So, one of the things that I really like about the set up that we have here is that whenever I do get a new student, if they need a little bit of work on their stamina then I can spend about, you know, a couple of months just helping them work on functional fitness in our gym. And we'll kind of alternate doing O&M three days a week and going down to the gym twice a week. Where we'll just work on building that basic body awareness, body concepts through weights in the gym, using the elliptical bikes to build up the cardio. Ultimately, I found that even with individuals that have really poor spatial awareness, after getting them in the gym and working with them on some functional fitness, they tend to be -- they tend to start making bigger strides as we get moving forward. Which is definitely a plus. I know that prior to coming to the center here, having that extra time to go to the gym with my students was not something that necessarily had access to. I will say that a lot of the workouts that I have my students do in the gym do tend to be more body weight focused. One thing I will have them do to help build that sense of balance and develop their proprioceptive sense is I'll have them do squats on top of a Bosu ball. If you have not heard them or seen them, they're those yoga balls that are kind of like a half ball. I'll have them stand on top of those and just start off really simple. Typically, I just have them start off trying to just stand on top of those for three-minute intervals. Once they start building that up then I'll build them up a little bit more at a time, starting off with something, a lower number of sets with lower number of reps. I'll have them two three sets of ten squats on top of the Bosu ball and really having them focus on the posture and the form that they're having to use when doing those different exercises. I don't have any research on it but I have noticed that just kind of anecdotally the individuals I work with in getting the gym, I've seen a lot of people where they would do the overcorrecting or undercorrecting when turning left or right. After spending some time in the gym doing different exercises, they're able to do more of a 90-degree turn on a reliable basis. Which I find to be -- make it a little bit easier for them trying to problem solve where they're going in space. Typically, it's a nice little stress relief for them as well, in addition to everything else that's going on. Again, it's a pretty intense program that they go through here. If any of y'all have -- are O&Ms or have been underneath a blindfold before, I'm sure you can relate to doing a two-hour O&M session underneath a blindfold. It's pretty mentally draining. We give that to them four times a day in all the different training areas. They're not receiving O&M four times a day but they're going through two-hour training increments four times a day and each class is putting them through very intense training in each of those classes. It can be very tough on individuals. Typically like to work in more breaks for them in the beginning but also work in fun things and being able to take my students down to the gym while it's also beneficial for them in their physical and mental endurance and it also allows them to have a little break from kind of the routine that they start developing and they kind of get to relax a little bit more, as opposed to just feeling like their brain is complete and utter mush after a two-hour session. One of the things I like to do when I'm working with adults here as well is coming back to the whole conversation piece. Being a blind O&M, it's kind of interesting to me. I would have to say, without actually counting them and going hard core stats on the students that I work with, I would say about half the people I work with, they don't want to work with me because I'm blind and the other half want to work with me because I'm blind. I find it kind of interesting but just the fact of where they're at on that or if they don't even care. I love being able to tie that into coming back to the whole conversation of about their adjustment to blindness. Working with adults, that's one of the major focuses is really addressing that adjustment to blindness. Seeing where they're at on that and helping them move their way through the different questions that come up. And whether one of my students is excited about working with me because I'm blind or is kind of anxious about working with me because I'm blind. It allows me to bring up a conversation with them just off of that. Ultimately, I will tell y'all that one of the points that I try to get my students to realize is that they shouldn't necessarily want to work with me, period because I'm blind or for or against that. That I'm an O&M, I know what I'm talking about and I'm going to help them learn how to travel. That's really what they should be concerned with. But it's an interesting conversation to have with them. I just saw something come in here. Let me see what's in the chat here. Okay. Question about the Deafblind. Yeah. Ultimately with our program here at Criss Cole, they have to get a referral from their field counselor to come here. We do have a Deafblind department. We have several individuals that work with -- actually everyone that comes to our center, whether they've been identified as Deafblind or not, everyone goes through a hearing screening when they first come in. A lot of people will come in on a tour prior to coming here. And we do a hearing screening with them then. If they haven't received a hearing screening prior to getting to our center, then they receive one on the very first day that they're here. And if they are identified to have any possible hearing loss whatsoever, then we work closely with audiologists here and we start the process of helping them get hearing aids. And then really incorporating the maintenance, the use of those hearing aids throughout their program here. But ultimately, they do have to get referred here by their Texas Workforce Commission counselor. You're welcome. I apologize. I'm diabetic myself and I need to dismiss an alert on my phone. A little bit after lunch so my blood sugar is high here. If I don't dismiss it, y'all are going to hear a charge. All right. Cool. Now that's off. Yeah. So back to training here at the center. Right now, in Austin it's really cool. I'm loving it because there's all sorts of construction going on, especially around our center here. We do have -- I would say probably at least a third of the students that come to the center here end up needing to get hearing aids. And so, the combination of the travel environments and the construction going on around here, it really allows for a great opportunity to work in O&M and it's not necessarily so much here's the actual techniques. A lot of the instruction that happens here is very practical. Yeah, yeah. It's quite a bit, Kaycee. We'll take them out and we definitely start inside and we do teach them all the basic techniques that they need to be safe traveling, especially Deafblind. But then beyond that we really get to start having fun and really kind of pushing the limit with them and getting them out. Getting them comfortable with curb traveling, traveling in the streets. Knowing how to make those adjustment calls and seeing what they notice. I would say that there's plenty of stuff that I actually end up learning from my students here, in addition to me being able to show them stuff. I don't know why I had never thought about it. I knew that the vision glasses that are out there allow you to do it. But I was out with one of my students the other day trying to find Raising Cane's and they pulled out their phone and used CNAI to verify the street by -- the sign by the edge of the street. It didn't make out enough that they knew, okay, this is for sure Raising Cane's, but using that program -- I just never thought about using CNAI when I was out on the street before. It's kind of cool. They'll point different things out to me. It really is a partnership working with adults, you know, wherever they want to go. We go and find it. They want to go to a bar, you know, I make sure that they know that, you know, we can go in the bar to verify that we made it to where we wanted to go but they're not allowed to have any drinks when we're out on lesson. That if they want to come back on their own time, then that's fine because they're adults. But, you know, we really get to go pick places. I, myself as a blind O&M and due to the setup that we have here, I will say that people will ask me -- one of the questions I get a lot of times is do I preview the area before I go teach a route? And I honestly don't. I want my students to learn to be comfortable enough in their reasoning and their problem-solving strategies that they're comfortable with being able to go out and make those adjustment calls. So, one of the things I like doing with people is I really like them finding random places that never have been to before and we kind of get to encounter what those situations are as we come across them together. And whenever we come across something that we can't really tell, hey, can I cross at this intersection or, you know, what happens if I get distracted on the bus because there's something grabbing my attention on the bus because someone is being super loud and obnoxious. We get to address that together. I do typically set, you know, an alarm on my watch that will vibrate that lets me know, worst-case scenario, whether we made it there or not that day. That it's time to start heading back to the bus stop so we can make it back in time for their next class. As they get more experience with travel, I start putting that decision on them. But we really get to kind of help them develop their skills together that way. Again, that comes back to the whole conversation of what are you noticing? What do you think is in your favor in this situation? What do you think's going against you here? Ultimately do you think that it's something that you think is okay to risk crossing here or risk going forward. There's definitely times where, being that safety net, I have to set in and say this probably isn't the best idea. But I would say, you know, the majority of the time we're able to come to the same consensus through that conversation. Sometimes they don't necessarily notice the same things I'm noticing just because they're not as practiced at noticing different things in the environment. Whether it be something that's tactile, auditory, you name it. And that's when I get to have some fun and kind of help them develop those extra senses. I like giving them little games to challenge their skills. An example of one that I'm actually playing with myself right now is there's this one stretch in particular over in the triangle where across the street from the center here. And the students get lost in there all the time just because it's more built for aesthetics than actual geometric shapes, like typically you would find on a sidewalk. And so, I've been playing games with -- O&M games with myself -- not when I'm out on a lesson with students but by myself traveling where I'll try and travel to a place, following the groove that water follows whenever it's draining, to get across to different areas within that building. What apps and technology do I use the most? For me, I am an iPhone user so my go-to right now is -- I keep going back and forth between Voice Vista and the new Sound Scape that's out there. I have noticed that the new Sound Scape that's out there, there's different roads. There's Sunshine Drive out here by the center. The new Sound Scape has that labeled as kind of like a service road. Voice Vista has it labeled as Sunshine. So, I kind of go back and forth between them. I'll be interested to see how the preexisting POI information, point of interest, that's uploaded into the apps, how that may change over time between the two apps. I still like that typical being able to actually point your phone in the direction and getting that auditory and haptic feedback about when you're tracking an actual beacon, since both of those apps have the same ability to do that. When it comes to actual planning of bus routes, I used to really use Move It. That's MOOVIT. If you're not sure which one I'm talking about. But here lately I've honestly been using our local Cap Metro app where they have their tickets. Every once in a while, I'll compare the routes that are -- that Cap Metro has given us versus the routes that transit or Moovit will pull up for me because those seem to pull up a few more routes, I've noticed than what the Cap Metro would pull up, even though they're pulling on the same data. But all three of those apps won't always necessarily give me all the options. In particular just getting to know the transportation routes here in Austin. Like when I'm going home, there's a route in particular that I take and it's just because I found little things in the route that I prefer. Like the route that Cap Metro, transit, and Moovit want me to take is along Bernet. They are broken up and sometimes non-existent. It's pretty obnoxious. It's a road that I have no problem traveling down, especially since there is a high volume of traffic so I can use the sound of traffic to get my line of travel off of while I'm walking down the block. But coming home I like to take a shortcut. I get to walk through a neighborhood street. Even though there's no sidewalks on it and curb travel. It's nice, easy going and I don't have to worry about getting tripped up on all the broken-up sidewalks that would be out on Burnett. But none of the transit apps give me that info. So, it's -- it has pros and cons. Ultimately, what I like doing to get to an area, though, is coming back to Voice Vista or Sound Scape and saving a marker on a location and kind of going back to the different games that I was talking about that I like to play with myself. I'll save a marker there and I'll track it and I'll keep tracking it from further out and I try to push it a little bit further, going without using the app to find my way back home or to a new location. Really making use of breadcrumbing with those GPS coordinates. And the game ends up being how close can I make it to that POI that I've saved without using the app. And slowly fading it out. That strategy is one that I teach my students quite a bit whenever I'm introducing them to apps. In particular, if they're going to college. Really learning to teach themselves routes -- multiple routes to a building so that way they can problem solve their schedule whenever it changes at the next semester. But really the phone apps are the main ones that I use. I do -- like if I'm going to use turn by turn directions, I do like making use of Google Maps and turning on the detailed voice guidance. If you are not aware of that feature, then you can turn that on in Google Maps by going to your user profile. You go to settings and the navigation area. All the way down at the bottom there's a little check box that you can check that will turn detailed voice guidance on or off. The thing I like about it is, it just gives more announcements. It gives them more frequent. Even if it's where Google Maps would say continue on straight and walk for -- like a quarter mile until you get to a certain intersection. The detailed voice guidance will, every 400 feet or so, will give you an announcement to confirm again that you are heading the correct direction. I haven't come across any intersections in particular where detailed voice guidance has been able to do this yet but I know that the main thing that Google was talking about when detailed voice guidance first came out is it would mention if an intersection was light controlled, stop sign, if it was a larger, light-controlled intersection. I have yet to experience Google Maps doing that yet but I still like playing with it. Catching up on a few questions coming through in the chat here. I heard JAWS going off in my one ear. I do not work with any elementary students at this point in time just because we only work with adults here at the Criss Cole Rehab Center. I have worked with elementary students in the past but more in an official mentor capacity. I'm definitely an O&M nerd. Like, I went blind from diabetes and I definitely counted my blessings that I was able to figure out about O&M and that I was able to pick it up. I really like being able to pass that on to anyone whenever I come across them. I totally like to geek out whenever it comes to O&M stuff. Like right now there's a lot of stuff going on with Cap Metro here in Austin and they -- it's really frustrating in some aspects but the O&M nerd in me is loving it because I'm getting to find out more and more about why they're doing certain things the way they are. They're starting to introduce fare capping. I know for sure Dallas does that already. But it's kind of interesting to see how that's rolling out here in Austin. I do help out with the access advisory committee here and I'm also about to start helping out with the TxDOT bicycle/pedestrian advisory committee. It will be cool to see how all that plays out. I'm seeing a comment about walking through using Voice Vista or Soundscape from the ground up. I don't mind doing that. I have done trainings like that before and maybe something can be figured out there. I see Kaycee has that noted. Dual diagnosis, particular intellectual disability. Actually, yeah. One of my, you know, I know we're not supposed to have favorite students but one of my favorite students I've worked with actually had an intellectual disability and, man, they pushed me more than some of the other students that I've had, just trying to figure it out. Ultimately, we ended up -- they ended up being a rote traveler. What was really cool was we were trying to hone in on what would help them best, from whenever they left training here at the center and went back home. Ways that they could advocate for themselves with an O&M out in the field -- or even just a friend or family member. And oddly enough, just kind of through trial and error, we ended up finding out that they took directions best when -- specifically when it involved pointing their shoulder towards something. You know, they had all the auditory information. We would come up and write out the routes and they would practice writing out the actual routes and part of those directions would involve, okay, step off the bus. Point your left shoulder towards traffic. And they were a really efficient Braille reader so we let them borrow a refreshable Braille display and we bluetoothed that up to their phone and they were able to read the next step in the route as they were going through the route. And actually, I ended up being able to get this individual to travel in a really complicated, very busy travel environment independently using that strategy. But that was a really cool little experience to go through with them. And there's been a couple of others that I've worked with intellectual disabilities and it kind of, again, just comes down to working with the individual person. Here at the center, again, we're working with adults and so they definitely enjoy, you know, us talking to them and working it out with them because they may be coming from a situation where at home they kind of get talked down to and patronized and here we really don't do that. Getting to go through that process with them where they get to make those decisions and have buy-in and just going back and forth, seeing what works for them. It's a pretty cool little -- I guess journey to go along with them. I heard a couple of things in chat. Just making sure I didn't skip over them. Okay. Cool. Don't see any of them. Yeah. I mean, honestly working with adults I find highly rewarding. Just, again, because I get to make it more of a conversation with them. A lot of how we approach teaching O&M here is practical. We start off teaching them, okay, here's your O&M skills A through Z. But that's really just such a small part of the training program here. We get the ability to take them through all those skills once they have them, no matter what they have going on, and really help them refine those skills and the systems that work for them. Talking about helping them realize, you know, if I'm tired, paying attention to the sound of traffic is going to be a little bit trickier for me that day. So, I might compensate by that by going a different route. Or a day like this I might just save up where I could catch a ride share as opposed to having to worry about navigating public transit because I didn't really get much sleep the night before. Or if it's raining, you know, if it's raining, it's okay. But I just might need to give myself a little bit extra -- I like to call it cushion time -- to do routes to and from where they're going. I thought I saw a chat just come through. I'm trying to see. 

>>Kaycee: Hey, Drew, it's Kaycee. Do you still recommend blindfolding with a CVI diagnosis? 

>>Andrew: So, through the program here we typically do that. We don't really do a whole lot of focus on helping to build up the use of vision with CVI. Honestly, I'm trying to think of -- we do get plenty of TVIs here but we don't really get any actual CVI. But even with the TVI cases, we still ask them to make use of the blindfold. And most people choose to do it. It's something that if they choose not to do it, we definitely don't make them. The main focus is we meet them where they are. But it just depends on the person. I have one individual right now that I'm working with that we're doing all visual training. And they're not CVI. They don't have additional disabilities on top of their vision loss. But their O&M training is also going a lot quicker because we're not slowing down to focus in on some of the stuff that we would do underneath the blindfold, just because that vision is there. We talked about how the vision could possibly decline in the future and how not necessarily focusing on all the other skills that we can really help emphasize underneath that blindfold. How that could cause them to need to go through training again in the future. And they decide that they still want to do it visually, that's okay. Ultimately, when it comes down to it, I tell all of my students that I just want to get them the training that they want. It's going to do them no good if I'm trying to train them -- if I want them to gain the skills more than they want to gain them. And so, anything that they want to learn how to do, I'm here to work with them. Okay. Yolanda is asking about the summer programs. Yeah, Yolanda, I talked a little bit about that at the beginning. We do have the transition programs where we really work on the orientation and mobility training with them, specifically on like a college campus environment but also really kind of just learning to navigate public transit independently on their own when no one else is there to help set stuff up for them. Y'all are being great about asking questions in the chat here. I hope y'all got everyone's questions answered. If not, feel free to go ahead and ask them. Question about whether individuals need to be referred to by Texas Workforce Commission for the summer programs. Yes, they do. Anything -- any training that they receive through the staff here at the Criss Cole Rehab Center, they do have to be referred to it by their counselors with Texas Workforce Commission. The other summer programs around the state, their counselors have to refer them to those programs as well. And if anyone was wondering, just because students may not be right around here in Austin, we have students come to our programs from all over Texas as well during the summer. All right. 

>>Kaycee: So awesome. Thank you so much, Drew! 

>>Andrew: Thank you for having me, Kaycee.