Episode 4: How the veterans of WW2 are still influencing your students’ independence.
We’re leaving history lessons from Big Red behind and taking a step forward with fun pieces of knowledge that you may not know!
Today, we are talking about the history of our profession and how the veterans of WW2 are still influencing your student’s independence.
Where the profession of Orientation and Mobility started:
You probably already know that our profession officially started during WW2 and then catapulted in the ’60s when the first university accredited programs were created.
You probably already know that guide dogs are said to originate from Germany (hello german shepherds!)
But what you may not know is that guide dogs have actually been around since at least the 13th century in China! There are cave drawings that depict a dog guiding a person with a visual impairment from 13th-century china.
From there, our profession started as a top-down philosophy. You know that we began as a profession to help veterans who were coming back from war. These veterans had normal IQ’s and a lot of visual knowledge before becoming blind from the war. THAT is where a lot of the techniques that we still use come from. Ever wonder why lower body technique was created? To protect the very sensitive parts of these male veterans!
We gradually started serving people further and further down the “invitation list” of the people seated at table of normal society and most anyone in a 1st world country who has a visual impairment can become eligible for services, down to babies and to people with multiple impairments.
Even in the united states, we still have O&M Specialists and administration who still operate further up on the scale of accessibility to services. They still believe that people who are not mobile don’t qualify for services. and in developing countries, there are still accessibility, cultural beliefs, and educational hardships to overcome in order to get all people with visual impairments traveling at their highest level of independence.
Because you know that when you feel at your most independent and successful, you feel more fulfilled. Think about when you are told you can’t do something. As O&M Specialists, we don’t like to be told we can’t do something, especially when it’s something we believe is right. When our independence is stripped away from us, it leads to a less fulfilling life. There are studies done that show that older people who start to lose their independence due to visual impairments are at greater risk for depression- this is for a reason!
Listen to the podcast to find out how our original Top-Down model started and where we are going now!
How will you take a step forward today?
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