When I interned for a major technology company in 2019, one of the most important “soft” skills I had to learn in my first few weeks was how to navigate my internship building and hallways independently with low vision. Like most corporate buildings, this building didn’t have a lot of brightly colored landmarks or people standing around that can offer directions, but by the end of the third week I had mastered the layout of the floor my team worked on, could navigate the cafeteria mostly without assistance, and could even find the offices for my engineer friends one floor below. Here is a list of tips that helped me learn how to navigate my internship building with low vision and a blindness cane (white cane).
Preparing for an intern with low vision
I learned that I would be on the program management team for a specific product in April, about two months before my internship was scheduled to begin. I was assigned both a manager and a mentor, and had the opportunity to meet my mentor at a professional conference the same day I found out I was assigned to their team. Both the manager and the mentor had already been made aware of my visual impairment, and the main thing they requested was that I let them know how to arrange my office as well as correct them if they were guiding me wrong or shared any incorrect information.
About a month prior to my internship start date, someone from the regional LightHouse for the Blind came to visit my team and instructed them on what to expect from having both a program management intern with low vision and a blind full-time employee who would be joining the engineering team. As part of this lesson, team members were trained how to be human guides and the importance of asking for consent, how to use descriptive language (instead of phrases like “over here” or “right there”), and the importance of identifying themselves before talking. While I don’t know many details about the training itself, whoever conducted it did a great job!
Related links
- How To Be An Effective Human Guide For People With Vision Loss
- Tips For Using A Human Guide At A Conference
- How To Approach Someone with Low Vision Without Scaring Them
Meet at the door on the first day
After I got out of the car on my first day of the internship, my mentor met me at the door of the building and showed me how to swipe my badge to get inside the building, since the keycard area blended in closely to the wall. I also learned how to find the elevator and which floor I would be going to, which was great because I wasn’t sure if the elevators went to every floor or not. My mentor had been easy to spot because they told me the day before that they would be wearing a brightly colored shirt, and I mentioned that I would be dropped off in front of the building (and that I would stand out with my purple blindness cane!).
If I had to swipe the badge in a specific direction like a hotel key, I would have asked them to put a piece of tape on the opposite side so I could orient the badge correctly.
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Narrating surroundings from the elevator to the office
Once we got off the elevator for the first time, my mentor asked if I would like to hold onto their arm, so I could make sure we didn’t get separated. I was glad they offered, and held onto their arm with one hand while keeping my cane extended with the other. As we walked, my mentor started narrating different things we would walk by, such as a kitchen, couch, and set of tables. They also would announce when we were turning left/right and if there was anything in the hallway I might trip over. At the end of the route, they shared I would make one right turn and three left turns to get from my elevator to my office area, which was easy to remember.
Decorating the door as a visual landmark
Some people on the hallway would decorate doors to add personalization, and I added some decorations to my door to add visual landmarking so that I don’t walk into the wrong office. While everybody’s door had a small sign with their name on it in standard print, my mentor and manager surprised me with a large print sign featuring my name and college, which was a fun detail. I also added a whiteboard to the door that I would draw or write messages on, including a reminder for people to identify themselves before saying hi or talking to me through the door.
If a more subtle decoration is desired, another option would be to add tactile bump dots to the door, braille labels, or another type of removable raised surface.
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Finding my own landmarks
As I would walk between my office, the elevator, and other destinations, I would often notice other visual landmarks like wall art, drink coolers, memes printed out and taped to the walls, art on people’s doors, and non-visual landmarks like changes in the floor texture or sounds of running water or people talking. These landmarks often were colorful compared to the surrounding area, and I would announce them as I walked by to practice with navigating between different places, either while walking by myself or with someone else as I continued to learn routes.
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Taking a tour of the floor
When getting to know other members of my team, I realized that I would often struggle to read office numbers and would ask them to describe where their office is so I would have another visual cue to look for. Some examples of answers people gave me include:
- To the left of the jellybean dispenser
- Across from the large drink cooler
- The office with the large superhero poster, the door is open at all times
- Two doors down from the bathroom, across from the stuffed panda bear
None of these items were likely to be relocated (the stuffed panda was huge!), so I could rely on these landmarks as another navigational tool. For the most part, landmarks were not within the path of walkways and did not keep me from using navigational techniques like wall trailing, but I did trip over items a few times.
Setting goals for learning how to navigate my internship
By the end of my first full week, I made it a goal to learn the following locations:
- My office
- Mentor’s office
- Manager’s office
- Bathroom
- Elevator
- Kitchen
- At least three other offices for team members
- Cafeteria
After learning 100% of these locations in a week, I added the following additional locations for the next week:
- Program management team meeting room
- Engineering meeting room (requires elevator)
- First floor conference room (requires elevator)
- Drink station
- Location of new friend’s office
- Two offices for team members
- Miscellaneous meeting room
I was able to find everything except for the rooms that required me to use an elevator, which I added to my practice list for the next week. While it would be impossible to learn the entire building (and I wasn’t allowed in some of the areas anyway), I worked on learning this last set of locations when navigating my internship with low vision by the end of the third week:
- Two more conference rooms (requiring elevator)
- Location of food trucks
- Location of paved walkways to other buildings and areas
- Urgent care
- Meeting/event space
- Stairs and emergency exit
While I didn’t like going outside by myself very often, I could figure out how to get to almost all of these places by the end of my third week!
Related links
- Campus Addresses Every Student Should Know: College O&M
- Accessible Maps and Wayfinding Tools For Low Vision
- Smartphone Apps For Orientation and Mobility
- Dealing With Dorm Fire Alarms: College O&M
Going to meetings with low vision
Out of all of the places I had to learn to navigate, the most difficult was the conference rooms because they all looked very similar and I often had no idea if I was walking into the right room or not. There were a few times where I would get lost or misread numbers in the dark hallways which would lead to missing the meeting, which was awkward and embarrassing, so I learned to walk with my mentor or other team members to avoid getting lost or walking into the wrong space.
While most employees would carry laptops in their hands, my laptop was too big for me to carry so I would bring a backpack everywhere, placing the laptop inside. I didn’t carry a charging cable or peripheral accessories like a keyboard or mouse because I primarily would use those in my office.
Related links
- What’s In My Backpack: Program Management Intern With Low Vision
- How I Set Up My Tech Internship Desk: PM Intern With Low Vision
Learning to navigate without my blindness cane
For short distances, I sometimes would leave my cane hanging on my office door because I didn’t think I would need it to walk a few feet. My team was already aware that people who use blindness canes can sometimes walk short distances without them, so my cane would be left behind if I was just walking across the hall, next door, or to the bathroom a short distance away (since I didn’t want to touch my cane with dirty hands!). Once I had walked these routes with my cane and/or a human guide in the form of my mentor, I felt comfortable going without my cane for brief moments.
Related links
More insight on how I learned to navigate my internship building with low vision
- While everybody on my team learned how to be a human guide, my mentor typically would act as my human guide the most often, followed by my manager or another person from my team I got to know. The term human guide is used because a guide does not have to have sight to be effective; the blind engineer taught me quite a few shortcuts!
- A lot of meetings that I hosted would take place in my office so that I didn’t have to set things up in another room. Having access to a whiteboard, desk, and lots of chairs helped a lot.
- I commuted to my internship either via company shuttle or getting a ride from a friend who worked in the same building. The company shuttle would drop me off/pick me up in the same location every day, and if my friend drove I would accompany them to/from the parking garage. Alternatively, I would use ridesharing apps.
Published June 10, 2019. Updated November 2024