Don’t hold white cane or grab us, offer your elbow: people with visually impairment to individuals who want to help

People with visual impairment explain the ideal method to help them in crossing roads is not by holding white cane, but offering elbow to hold.

Empathetic individuals who want to help people with visual impairment in crossing or navigating on roads often hold their cane to direct them on main roads filled with traffic. However, people with the partial or complete disability say that this method throws them off the path. The ideal method, they stress, is to let them hold just above the elbow, at the lower portion of upper arm. 

Preetham Sunkavalli, corporate executive, says there are broadly three types of canes: support cane, mobility cane and ID cane. The latter two are used by people with visual impairment. Some of the mobility canes have revolving tips at the bottom.

“My cane tip rolls along the ground. Based on how it vibrates, I can tell what the ground is. If someone holds the cane, it doesn’t vibrate anymore and I don’t get the feedback,” says Mr. Sunkavalli, who has partial visual impairment and uses a cane regularly. 

Sadaf Irfan Khan, who works as a HR recruiter and Diversity, Equity and Inclusion advocate, says there are some markings that she makes a mental note of on regular routes. When someone holds the cane and lifts it, she gets disoriented from the route.

Ms. Khan recalls that she was once waiting for a friend by the side of a road when a traffic policeman assumed she wanted to cross the road, held the cane and started to pull her. 

“I was telling him I don’t want to cross the road. It was only after I pulled him by the elbow and said it again that he stopped,” adds Ms. Sadaf.

Recalling an instance, B. Basawaraju, a teacher, who has complete visual impairment, says a person held his cane and started to direct him on a road and left him near a divider. “I was lost for a while,” he said.