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The sway of a left-hand turn. The surge and rise of a hill. The hum and rumble of crossing a bridge.

All help Seattle's blind citizens keep track of their whereabouts as they travel by bus.

But those comforting cues will all change on Sept. 24, when Metro closes its bus tunnel for two years of Sound Transit retrofitting, and changes routes all over the region.

"The more disabled you are, the more challenging the closure is going to be," said Nancy Lopez-Swaney, one of 39 employees of the Lighthouse for the Blind, who attended a 90-minute meeting on the changes.

"People are going to lose their bearings," said Lopez-Swaney, a customer-service representative at the nonprofit who is legally blind. "And if you tend to have anxiety ... We just don't do change very well."

Lighthouse, which offers the blind and deaf-blind education, training and employment, received a grant from Metro to provide bus-travel training to its disabled employees and clients. Much of that work has gone to David Miller, Lighthouse's mobility training specialist for 15 years.

But the bus-tunnel closure — the slow drip of information, and the anxiety that delay has caused — has forced Miller to hire another specialist to help people negotiate the changes.

"We are slammed," Miller said. "We have been asking Metro for this information since last year, and just got it this summer."

Much of the new route information is still coming out, Miller said — and time is of the essence.

"Any alteration has to be relearned," he said. "Any change compounds the difficulty."

There are many challenges for those who use the bus to live independently:

Communicating with a new driver. Crossing an unfamiliar intersection.

Some disabled people can't tell where to stand so that the bus driver can see them. Others need Miller to make them "rider-assistance" cards bearing their route numbers, so drivers know when to stop, and who to help on and off the bus.

Most Metro drivers do this "beautifully," Miller said, even signing the route numbers into blind-deaf riders' palms.

But where Metro has failed is in getting route information to Lighthouse so that it can pass it along to employees and clients.

Metro spokeswoman Rochelle Ogershok was not available for comment.

But the agency has said it will send employees out to downtown bus stops, tunnel entrances and tunnel-station platforms on Monday to answer questions and provide information about the closure and new bus routes.

For Lopez-Swaney, a new bus route has meant "missing buses, being late a lot, not knowing where I am."

"The buses are slower, the traffic is awful."

But she feels lucky to work in a place where such occurrences are shared and understood.

"One wonderful thing about working here is the flexibility," she said. "They cut us a lot of slack."

We all should.

Nicole Brodeur's column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. Reach her at 206-464-2334 or nbrodeur@seattletimes.com.

Thank you, Helen Blumenthal.