Orientation and Mobility (O&M) is the profession of instructing blind and low-vision people in navigating the world safely and effectively: knowing where one is in relation to physical objects in space (orientation), and reasoning, planning, and executing where one is going (mobility). Cane Travel Instruction is a term that refers, as the name suggests, to a concentration on using the cane specifically to navigate the world, in addition to other Orientation and Mobility techniques. In practice, the terms Orientation and Mobility and Cane Travel are often used somewhat interchangeably by those describing the field. (See the FAQs for more information.)
How People Learn to Travel with Low or No Vision
Travel is a thinking skill. Mental maps, spatial reasoning, and alternative sensory cues are what get people where they need to go. Developing perception of these alternative sensory cues — and specific methods of using them to accomplish activities of daily living, including movement-based tasks — takes consistent practice, like any skill, and can be as effective as, if not more effective than, the natural instinct to rely on residual vision.
Noticing, attending to, and adopting adaptive thinking strategies — evaluating, monitoring, and updating one’s own thought processes — is an important part of Cane Travel. Considering what is known, what is not, and how to gather information effectively are skills every person uses while moving through the world, whether the information at hand happens to be visual or nonvisual. Cognitive and metacognitive learning play a far more lasting, impactful role in successful travel than visual ability alone. The emotional adjustment to blindness, confidence in applying and relying upon one’s skills, and belief in oneself as an agent who can create change in the world are foundational to independent movement that persists across the lifespan.
Structured Discovery Learning: Why It Lasts
Structured Discovery is a strengths-based approach built on a premise that blind adults who navigate the world successfully consistently point to as the differentiator: realistic, adaptive beliefs about blindness are inseparable from — and essential to — adjustment-to-blindness training that sticks. (See the FAQs for more about consumer and student reports of Structured Discovery learning.)
Structured Discovery moves along a continuum between two extremes: heavily guided teaching, where the instructor supplies nearly everything, and unassisted trial and error, where learning is left to chance. The goal is to design and elicit experiences in the real world that encourage increasing self-reliance as the learner progresses. Starting with a guided learning approach, instructors equip students with tools to gather and assess information about their environment. Students first use these tools across applied settings under the instructor’s observation; then they are gradually expected to complete independent assignments requiring higher levels of skill — and stronger belief in their own ability to use it.
Students with remaining vision train under sleepshades. Vision that fluctuates with lighting, glare, or fatigue is an unreliable foundation for skills a person’s safety depends on; techniques mastered nonvisually work under any conditions, and whatever vision a student has becomes useful extra information rather than a requirement.
Routes may be taught, but the consistent emphasis is on building transferable skills that come with the student across changing environments, changing circumstances, and the lifespan. Depending on their commitment and unique abilities, a person may be able to reduce or eliminate the need for additional Orientation and Mobility training later in life. The student’s attitudes, beliefs, and expectations are explored — and at times challenged — as part of helping them adopt more accurate views of blindness, views they will continue to refine long after training has concluded. Developing the judgment to think for oneself is, therefore, a critical component of independent movement.
The payoffs show up immediately as well as years later. Training organized around residual vision often has to be repeated if vision changes, a pattern familiar enough in rehabilitation to have earned a name: the revolving door. Skills built on nonvisual perception, adaptive thinking, and realistic beliefs about blindness hold steady whether vision stays the same or doesn’t. Structured Discovery can ask more of a student up front. It repays that investment with independence that persists.
Structured Discovery Cane Travel is grounded in the cognitive model of cane travel developed by Richard Mettler in his text Cognitive Learning Theory and Cane Travel Instruction: A New Paradigm (1995; 2nd ed. 2008). My own research and writing focus at present on how metacognitive learning develops during Orientation and Mobility instruction — how students learn not just routes, but how to contemplate and execute the exploration of unfamiliar space.
Where to Go From Here
If you or someone you care about could benefit from Orientation and Mobility instruction, you can read about the services Traverse Instruction offers or get in touch directly — every inquiry is welcome, whether you’re a prospective student, a family member, a counselor, or an educator.