Kim’s Radio Interview with Juice107.3

The following radio interview was recorded in the studio at Juice107.3, Gold Coast. Radio hosts Chloe and Elerrina interviewed Kim Pilic, Orientation & Mobility Specialist, from Forward Steps Mobility. The interview was part of a paid sponsor promotion opportunity. Interview transcription, as follows:
Chloe: This is good taste brekky with Chloe and Elerrina this morning. Joining us also in the studio is an Orientation & Mobility Specialist, which I didn’t know really what that was up until this morning.
Elerrina: me neither!
Chloe: And I’m pretty excited to learn more about it. Her name is Kim Pilic. Good morning!
Elerrena: Good morning!
Kim: Hi ladies!
Chloe: Great to have you. Now you just took us through a bit of an exercise which was quite interesting to be able to feel as though we were legally blind. And you took us through using a cane. What would you call that process that we went through this morning?
Kim: This morning really covered an experiential opportunity to see what it might be like to walk about, inside the studio area here, without any vision, or what we would regard as no light perception, with the aid of, what we’d call a long cane, and you ladies did really well with that.
Chloe: Thank you!
Kim: And the cane was designed to give some preview about the changes in ground surface information, like moving from carpet to tiles, or vice versa, and also lot’s of furnishings around and structural objects so it was actually providing body protection or preview about those obstacles around you, to help you move efficiently and effectively with dignity, and safely through that space.
Chloe: When you see someone in the street with a cane or a guide dog, what is something you that could do to perhaps, aid this person and what are some of the common misconceptions.
Kim: So, to aid the person - initially it might be just about observation. I’ll give you an example actually. So recently I’ve been working with a young man at a university, (this is a really good question you’ve asked), because I received feedback from another source, that he arrived at his drop-off point on that campus, and unfortunately trucks had occupied that drop-off zone, and the university was setting up marques, and there were forklifts around, unbeknownst to him. So, in that instance, I’m aware that nobody came forward to offer him assistance. Now observationally you can see that there’s a lot of changeability factors or things that are unusual in that environment, that as a student you would note aren’t normally there, and might pose a challenge. So, some of it’s common sense, and to consider the safety of a person. Around road crossings, typically people are taught how to move across roads safely if they have a long cane, generally speaking, they should have received some official formal training around the cane, including road crossings, but you can’t assume that that’s the case at every intersection or road crossing they negotiate. With regards to your other question Chloe, would you mind repeating that please?
Chloe: What are some of the common misconceptions?
Kim: Okay, yep, thank you! Some of the common misconceptions might be that if someone is operating with a dog guide or with a long cane with a ball on the end of it, that they need to be totally blind, or have no light perception or light perception only to be functioning with that particular mobility aid. But that’s actually a fallacy. It is a misperception. A lot of people might require the need of a long cane or a dog to assist their fluidity, so that they’re not looking down, to improve their posture, and actually help them to maximise that little bit of residual vision for looking around their environment, to scan at road crossings, to aid in their decision making, or to look for visual landmarks to help them know that they are heading in the right direction. It just assists them to move about with more efficiency, and to improve their posture. And that all interplays with their dignity out in the public as well. So, if you see a person with a dog or a white cane, don’t assume, don’t make that assumption that they shouldn’t have that aid because it looks like they can see something. You could have somebody pick-up a newspaper with very clear what we call visual acuity, where they might be able to read all the way to the bottom of the eye chart and have 6/6 vision, or in the empirical measurement it would be 20/20, but they might need the assistance of that white cane, to help them, because of the functional effects on their vision to do with visual field loss, so, yeah.
Elerrina: How do you go about people’s feelings and mental health, because I can imagine that while you’re going through things with people if they’ve like just recently come into this blindness, they would get so frustrated. How do you go about dealing with that?
Kim: There can be a lot of emotional impact for people with the grief and going through the adjustment process to loss. It’s a very normal thing for people to experience, through what we call adventitious blindness, and that means they weren’t necessarily born that way, it’s happened, it might be very sudden, it might be degenerative and progressive, but it certainly does impact people. I worked with a man who had experienced low vision for a long time and never needed to use a cane, so he used to walk about his local area, to work, and up to the shops. He then experienced complete loss of vision with the Diabetic Retinopathy, he had a massive haemorrhage, the Ophthalmologist couldn’t salvage any more vision for him, so he had to learn to operate in moving about without any vision. When I first met him, he had been reclusive for about three months. And, he really didn’t want to go out anywhere, and it was his mother that had contacted me to come out and offer some support or assistance to see what could actually be provided to move him out of his home environment. So, essentially, the initial point was to engage in rapport with him, to build confidence, and there’s a lot of trust involved when you don’t know someone and they’ve turned up and they’re saying, how about we just head out for a coffee.
Chloe: Well, thank you so much for joining us this morning Kim Pilic from Forward Steps Mobility. If you want to check her out if you or someone you know suffers from vision impairment, she is definitely the one to go to and is now one of our station sponsors. So, thanks again for joining us!
Elerrina: Yeah, thanks Kim!
Kim: Thank you! Thanks Chloe, thanks Elerrina!

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