The Valley Center for the Blind (VCB) teamed up with employees from the City of Fresno's Public Works Department Tuesday to give them a feel for what it's like to be visually impaired.
The goal of the sensitivity training was for them to better understand how visually impaired people move around the city and for engineers and designers to apply that knowledge when planning future projects.
Employees using canes were blindfolded and guided along sidewalks outside City Hall.
"It feels kind of like everybody's taking your power away because you don't know where you're going or what you're doing. It makes it a big difference to have to rely on someone to kind of have to help you get around," says Jon Clark, who works in street maintenance for the City of Fresno.
Non-visual cues around the city help those who are navigating without sight. Talking or beeping traffic signals let people know when they can cross in the walkway, and the yellow bumps at the edge of the sidewalk (called truncated domes) let people know they've reached an intersection.
But visual signals do those without vision no good--creating a potentially hazardous situation. At the intersection of Tulare and O streets in downtown Fresno, a sign lets people know that the sidewalk on the other side of the street is closed due to construction-- something a blind person travelling by him or herself could not read.
"They get to see the little things that are taken for granted as a sighted person, such as a crack on the sidewalk, a pole a little too far from the intersection where you're going to line up," says Frank Lizarde, 48, who was born blind.
Although Lizarde faces challenges as a blind person, he doesn't let those challenges hinder his mobility and independence.
That's something Ken Warkentin, executive director of VCB, understands. Three years ago, his daughter Shaela was hurt in a bad accident and lost her vision. She's had to relearn to be mobile.
"Being able to get to school, to and from work, all those types of things--independent travel is very important," Warkentin says.
At the end of the training, city workers said that being blindfolded and having to be guided to walk along sidewalks made them feel lost, afraid, uncertain and hopeless. They said it was mentally exhausting.
With a better understanding, the goal is for future city projects to be planned using what was learned in the sensitivity training so that visually impaired people can be able to move independently without putting their safety at risk.