Lesson 7: Mobility Matters
Name(s) of students(s):
Age and grade level:
Goal or objective from IEP connected to lesson:
After completion of the lesson, the student will be able to:
- State three reasons mobility skills are essential for work.
- State two resources for seeking out additional mobility training as an adult.
- Demonstrate sighted guide techniques to a person unfamiliar with the techniques.
Materials needed: Note taking device, Internet access, and personal resource file
Discussion: Office Travel
“Imagine you’ve landed a job. How will you become oriented to your new workplace? It is important to be able to independently navigate your office environment to attend meetings in the conference room, locate the storage room, meet with your supervisor in her office, go to the restroom, locate the emergency exit, and the like. If your job requires travel to other locations, you’ll need to know how to navigate the airport and mass transit systems in order to get where you need to go. Although you should be receiving advanced mobility training now, in the future you may find that you need to seek out additional resources to assist you in your endeavors to be a confident traveler. You will also need to be aware of your rights as they relate to travel (such as knowing that you can ask to have a guide during a fire drill at work). The next series of activities will expose you to some resources for dealing with a transportation or mobility challenge.”
VisionAware Resources on Transportation
In addition to the resources used in the activities below, VisionAware offers a host of information on mobility topics, including the following articles.
- Air Travel After Vision Loss
- A Dog Guide Diary
- Dog Guides for People with Vision Loss
- Traveling on Trains and Buses When Your Blind Spots Are Everywhere
Activity 1: Keep Moving
- How could you use this video in your workplace?
- Plan a time to give a presentation to your classmates on the sighted guide technique. Select one of your peers to give you feedback about your presentation. Use the feedback to improve your presentation.
- If it is not already, transportation will become one of your top priorities when you become employed. You do not want to be bypassed for a promotion because your employer thinks you can’t reliably travel to another office or meet clients for dinner. Hiring a driver may be a solution for some of your work-related transportation needs. Read Finding and Hiring a Driver to learn more about hiring a driver. Use the information from the article to create an advertisement and a job application for hiring a driver. Keep the advertisement and job application in your resource file.
Goal of next lesson: