As a child, we would have read several stories about a magic wand. This magic wand can manage practically anything. It can make a rabbit appear from a tall hat or it can take us round the world, like the witch's broom. That is a stick for entertainment. Can a real life stick do not the vanishing, but the visualising, trick?
Yes, there sure IS such a magic wand, and it indeed lights up, makes visible the world of the visually challenged, the visually impaired. It is the white cane, and October 15 is the national white cane day.
The white cane is absolutely a magic wand for the people with low or no vision. It guides them while walking down the road, climbing up the stairs, crossing a busy street. In a way, not only does it enable them to become independent, strong, resilient, but it also enables the so-called common, ordinary, able people/society to be empathetic regarding the problems of the visually impaired. Indeed a magic wand it is!
How was it born? A Bristol photographer, named James Briggs, became blind in an accident in 1921. The world was thus rendered invisible to him. He, however, wanted to remain visible to the world so that he would not meet any further accidents. Hence he painted his walking stick white.
In the early 1930's, Guilly d'Herbermont, a French woman, launched the white cane movement in France. Thus the concept gained currency in the Western World. In the America of the 1930's, it was the Lion's Club that made the the white cane continentally, and then, world-famous. With the advent of technology, sure the traditional white cane has been rendered more and more visually sophisticated for the visually impaired.
In brief, magic renders the dark reality of the ugly, ordinary life in to a life livable and lovable! Long live such life sustaining hacks, simple but soulful truly!
Pratima@Hail the magic wand that renders visible a 'dark' (in every sense of the term) reality!
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