Fall 2006

Sharon Schauer, customer service representative, at work. Sharon's workstation is equipped with an electronic braille display to help her access information on her computer.

A torn meniscus led Sharon Schauer, customer service representative, to the Lighthouse orientation and mobility (O & M) department. “I knew I was going to have knee surgery,” Sharon recalls. “I had to figure out some way to get around work without bumping into people.”

Sharon, who has been blind since birth due to Retinopathy of Prematurity, is adept at using a white cane to maneuver throughout the Lighthouse and beyond. With surgery looming, she knew her traditional travel aid wouldn’t work with a wheelchair or walker.

“O & M specialists David Miller and Beth Jurco came up with the idea of using the SonicGuide,” says Sharon. The SonicGuide is an electronic travel aid that uses sonar to detect objects in the user’s path. When an object is detected, it emits electronic noises to alert the user.

“They taught me to use it with both a wheelchair and with the walker because we didn’t know how extensive the impact of the surgery would be,” Sharon explains. “We just attached it to the walker.”

Beth Jurco worked with Sharon before her surgery to learn new routes around the Lighthouse using the SonicGuide. “It was really interesting because it was a different way of doing things. It was a challenge – which I rather liked. I like challenges,” Sharon says. “If you’re going to learn something completely new like that, it’s good to have an instructor you can trust. I felt like I could trust Beth.”

After surgery, Sharon returned to work using the walker combined with the SonicGuide. “You can use the SonicGuide in a controlled environment like the Lighthouse, so it worked well for that. I had to wear headphones with it so I had to get used to these sounds in my ear as well as listening for anything else I had to listen to out there,” she says. “It was an eye opener for me to be using something like this. I didn’t know much about it before I used it.

She adds, “It worked out really well because when I came back, I used the walker a little bit. But I have a support cane which helped tremendously. One has four feet on the bottom, but the one I’m using has a round rubber tip on the bottom. I call it my ‘leaning cane’ and then I have my regular white cane, which is my ‘looking cane.’”

For Sharon, the most important part of her O & M training was being able to get out of surgery and back to her job. “It really came in handy for me to have that. I’m glad that the Lighthouse had Beth here who could work with me so that even if my knee wasn’t completely better I could come back to work,” she concludes.

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