Everything Recreation

2012-05-22-Recreation

Seminars@Hadley

Presented by Jody Royder Cody Hatfield Debbie Braungart

Moderated by Shirley McCracken

May 22, 2012

Shirley McCracken Well it is my privilege to introduce our speakers today. We have Jody Royder, Cody Hatfield, and Debbie Braungart. They hold degrees in Recreation Therapy and in Special Education. They have a combined total of over 18 years of providing recreation services and teaching recreation adaptations to people who are blind and visually impaired and who may have other disabilities.

They have assisted individuals enhance their social and leisure development, so that they could fully participate in their chosen life pursuits. They are currently employed with Texas Commission for the

Blind at the Criss Cole Rehabilitation Center in Austin Texas. Welcome Debbie, Jody, and Cody. I am going to turn the microphone over to you so that you can begin today’s seminar.

Cody Hatfield My name is Cody and I just want to get us started today by kind of giving ya'll an idea of what we’ll talk about today. We want to start out and talk about benefits of recreation and go from there just to get people out there. You may already have ideas of what’s possible, as a person who is blind, but we would like to talk about some of the possible rec activities - everything from; outdoor activities, to crafts, to community involvement.

Then we will get into some general guidelines for adaptations if that’s something you’re interested in, and then maybe talk a little bit about motivation to explore new interests and continue old hobbies, and we will probably wrap up with what barriers to recreation, both internally and externally you may have or some of the things that we have run into as professionals in this career.

One other thing I wanted to mention before we get going is that as professionals in the rehab business here in Texas, we use the term consumers a lot, and

As Shirley said also, please do feel free to send in questions to the chat box, if they are topic related as we go through we can get to them, we will try to address those as we go through, but we will also leave time at the end to address most of those questions. We are going to start at this point with Jody. I am going to turn the mic over to her to talk about some of the benefits of recreation.

Jody Royder This is Jody. Some of the benefits I have seen as a practitioner of therapeutic recreations are social, emotional, and physical benefits. So I am going to kind of go through those and then we'll move on. So some of the social benefits are to feel a sense of belonging and connectedness to the community; to develop a support network; to meet people with similar interests which often leads to learning new hobbies and skills and to improve communication or social skills through teamwork, assertiveness, problem solving, decision making, conversational skills - all of which are important for finding and maintaining employment.

Also another social benefit would be to develop self- advocacy leadership skills and to educate the public about the abilities of people who are blind and have other disabilities. Staying active plays a critical role in wellness, prevention, healing, and maintenance of physical and emotional wellbeing. Some of the mental and emotional benefits of participating in recreational programs and staying active are things like to gain confidence through skill mastery and improve sense of self; to reduce stress, depression and emotional anxiety.

Some of the physical benefits of being active, are that you can prevent secondary health problems like heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, depression, arthritis, osteoporosis, and obesity. Also you can reduce reliance on medication or make medication more effective. Exercise and physical activity can increase strength, endurance, mobility, flexibility, and balance. So now Cody is going to go over some of the possible recreation activities.

Cody Hatfield Yes, so now you have an idea of kind of what the benefits are, and also as we are going through, at the end when we get there we would love to hear some of you all’s personal benefits that you get from recreating. Whether or not we have disabilities, I think

©2012 The Hadley School for the Blind Page 4 of 45 2012-05-22-Recreation quality of life improves from having a healthy lifestyle of both work and play. What I would like to talk about now are some of the things that are out there.

Some of you that are listening maybe recently had loss of vision and are not just quite sure what’s happening as far as what’s out there available to you or you may be in the field of rehab or working with individuals who are blind. So we just want to talk about some of the things that are out there. We are going to start out with some sports, and adaptive sports that are still a possibility as a person who is blind.

So everything from basketball, bowling - you can still get out there. You can go with very minor adaptations, it could be just a couple friends and tapping on the rim to give you a location on where the rim in basketball is, you can add bells to the net of the basketball. They do make basketballs with bells in them. So if you’re shooting alone and the ball rolls away you can kind of get a track on where it is headed. Bowling - they do make rails available to give you a lineup on the lane, but you don’t even need that.

I have seen plenty of people who have got their bowling stroke down - just walking up to the lane,

©2012 The Hadley School for the Blind Page 5 of 45 2012-05-22-Recreation using their cane and the gutter to get themselves lined up, and then bowl away. Swimming is still an option out there; martial arts; jujutsu is a great martial art to get into if you’re still interested in pursuing those hobbies because your hands on in the practice of jujutsu; you’re always in contact with your opponent. Another thing that is real big here is Austin in cycling; they have lots of different social clubs, and social rides that they do around here.

You can pick up tandem bikes at a local bike store, or even some places will have tandem bikes for rent. It is one of the things that if you’re interested in that, just pursuing those outlets as well as even Craigslist can be a way to post ads for somebody to be captain your bike that you have. Some of the other things here sport wise that I have – soccer – still options out there for soccer, even just throwing a plastic bag over your soccer ball gives you that auditory feedback as its rolling around, and actually is a great effective way to do it for no cost at all really.

They do also make soccer balls that have rattles in them. We prefer those over the bells just because even as the soccer ball comes to a stop, you will still hear that auditory feedback from those rattles, versus the bells tend to die off pretty quick. For those of you who may know some of the adaptive sports, beep

©2012 The Hadley School for the Blind Page 6 of 45 2012-05-22-Recreation baseball and goal ball are adaptive sports that have specifically been developed for the blind. Beep baseball - there are teams all across the US, and the world that play, travel, they have world championships.

Beep baseball is similar to baseball as far as you play it on a baseball field, but other than that much of the rules are a completely different thing, but it is an amazing sport to be a part of, amazing sport to go participate or watch, and that is definitely something I would encourage seeking out more information if you’re interested in it. Goalball is another adaptive sport. It is a Paralympic sport, played all around the world, specifically developed for the blind as well, and it is typically played indoors in gym settings, like basketball gyms and stuff.

Those are just a few of things; there are lots of options out there. Like I said, we are just going to give people a feel of what there is still available out there, and even talking about some of the things that maybe, not even thinking about as somebody who is recently blind. As far as some outdoor activities that we want to also mention, we've got backpacking, hiking - those are still viable options.

Getting out there taking a bear bell with you is a simple way to just throw that on your backpack. Hikers do that anyways in areas where you have the potential to run into some bears, just to let the bears know you’re coming. It makes for a great way to just keep a track on your buddy in front of you as you’re hiking through these trails. As far as getting off the trail and those kinds of things, just developing and working out there with your cane to get through those different obstacles and rough terrain is something that’s still a totally viable option.

There are things like here in the U.S., they have National Park access pass that’s free for people with disabilities that you can pretty much get into any National Park, Bureau for Land Management, those public lands and stuff, so that’s something worth checking into, whether it’s in the U.S. or probably in any country. Rock climbing, ice climbing, kayaking, fishing, getting out there and going camping like we said.

You know grilling out and picnicking is something simple that sometimes we talk to you in this field, that people thought I can't get out there, and I can't grill out, that used to be my favorite thing was taking my family out to the park and being able to cook up some hamburgers, or whatever it is. That’s definitely, you

©2012 The Hadley School for the Blind Page 8 of 45 2012-05-22-Recreation can still do those things so people can get out there, they can learn some techniques for using charcoal and lighter fluid, and be able to do it completely independently, as well as the grilling aspect of it.

Skiing, - personal favorite of mine - here in Texas we don't get too much of that, but people love to travel still with family and friends and go on vacations. There are plenty of places here in the states, and all over the world that offers adaptive skiing. They have adaptive sports centers in many resort locations and somebody is mentioning right now Ski for Light is an organization. There is an adaptive sport center in Crested Butte in Colorado as well as National Disability Center in Utah. There are a bunch of places different throughout the United States and places that you can ski, and they also offer programs throughout the year for summer activities as well.

Jody Royder Somebody mentioned golf. There is a Blind Golfers Association as well, and Shirley is posting a resource list of recreation activity adaptations, organizations you can join that are specific to your interests, like the Blind Golfers Association. Even organizations like The Midnight Ringers that is a blind horseshoe association. So there is a blind bowling league, and if some of this stuff is not available in your area, that

©2012 The Hadley School for the Blind Page 9 of 45 2012-05-22-Recreation might be something you can do to set up in your community. But we will be posting that list with all the contact email and websites and phone numbers.

Cody Hatfield Thank you, David, for making that comment about the Ski For Light and stuff. If there is something that you feel is important out there that we are not mentioning, we are trying to get ideas out there, and we would love to hear those things as we are going down, if there is something that for you was shocking that, "Hey, I didn't realize that people are out there doing this as individuals who are blind and stuff.” So like I said skiing, as well as just kind of wrapped into that with the adaptive sports centers, it kind of wraps in. Your ice climbing will usually offer those things too - everything from sledding, to snowmobiling, to in the summer they get into more of the rafting, kayaking, camping - all those kinds of things. You can search those things out as far as if you’re looking for a place you can travel to a destination, typically in the mountains you can seek out those places as vacations and still be able to do the things with your family, stuff that you would like. As far as the other outdoor things I had listed here are rafting, lawn games are a huge thing here as we get into our spring weather here in Texas and coming into summer.

Getting out in the back yard or going out to a get- together with friends and family, you can still get out there and play those lawn games you like - horseshoes, ladder golf is one that is really popular right now. Basically it is a game you can pick up these days in the stores, or you can make on your own, and it’s basically throwing golf balls that are tethered together by a string, and trying to get them to wrap around a three horizontal bars on a stand. Beanbag toss is similar to Washers, Washers themselves, Bocce ball games, all those lawn games are totally accessible.

You can get into them, a lot of them you don't need any adaptation. Some things may be as simple as adding a brighter color to an object, more of a contrasting color, or you could even add auditory beepers. You don't have to go buy the expensive $20 or $40 beepers. You can look online and find those luggage locators work great, especially because you can have the remote in your hand and when you need that auditory feedback, you just give the button a press, and there you go.

Seeing some people talking about… Tiffany’s talking about track and field is a good sport for visual impairments. You know we are right across from a school for the blind, and they have a track, and they

At this point we are going to move onto some games, just talk about simple stuff as far as board games that some people may have been wondering how they could still participate with grandkids, family and friends. Things like Battleship to Sorry, chess, sometimes chess doesn't take any adaptation; checkers, can be as simple as adding one texture to one side of the checkers or something like that, or working with contrasting colors on your board, as far as giving you something that works better for low vision and stuff.

Things like Mancala, which is an ancient game needs no adaptation at all, you’re just picking up the pieces and counting them in your hand and moving them to the next thing. Cards, they make all kinds of cards that are available in large print, they have them in Braille, you can adapt your own cards, whether it is adding what we like to call puff paint, but it’s basically a fabric paint to those cards to give it a raised texture as far as two of diamonds would be 2D.

Dominoes are a great thing that for a lot of people they are not going to need any adaptation to them. One thing that maybe is not adapting to dominoes

©2012 The Hadley School for the Blind Page 12 of 45 2012-05-22-Recreation themselves would be throwing a little magnetic strip on the back of dominoes and you can put that onto a cookie sheet or something like that. That way, as you are trying to feel around on the dominoes you’re not knocking them over or anything like that. You can even hold that board under a table or something like that so you’re still concealing what you've got in your hand but able to move those around without worrying about knocking them off everywhere.

Connect 4 you can add again with that puff paint or fabric paint, just adding a dot to the side of those pieces to differentiate between the two colors. Monopoly, and then somebody had mentioned on the chat room, that they had Monopoly. Yeah, that is one of those, Monopoly and Scrabble we would definitely recommend looking into purchasing those as they come. You can get those fully adapted with all the cards in braille. The board would already have an overlay of raised print.

Those are definitely worth the money as far as adapting those, because if you took the time to do all the stuff they have already have done you would be there all year. Things like Twister - that is a great one you can still get out there and do that with kids, and add in just some textures to differentiate between those colors. We did that here as an activity before;

©2012 The Hadley School for the Blind Page 13 of 45 2012-05-22-Recreation added felt to some of the circles, added sandpaper on some of the other ones, and made simple adaptations that didn't take much time at all.

Things like Jinga where you are removing wood blocks from this tower, doesn’t take any adaptations at all. Cribbage is a great one I noticed someone mentioned, there are no adaptations needed other than your card deck as far as what you prefer on that. As David mentioned, don't forget chess, and they have Hadley’s top notch instructor there. But basically you have got all kinds of options still as a person with vision impairments or blindness. It really comes down to what you were into before is always going to be a factor in those kinds of things. What we are going to talk about now…

Jody Royder Also on the chessboard, there is a chessboard available that is electronic that talks to you, and I think it called Alexandria. You can get that through Maxi Aids or LSS&S, and we can touch on some specific activity adaptations at the end, but we can also go over what games are worth purchasing that are already adapted. Those are usually more expensive, and where you might purchase those games.

Cody Hatfield

Jody is going to talk a little bit more about adapting whether it is board games, or just in general when you’re thinking adaptations for whatever sport or game you would like to get into.

Jody Royder Some general guidelines for adaptively is basically the activities are done with the same approach, just using minimal adjustments. So we use a lot of textures on game boards, and that might be for game pieces, to differentiate between yours and your opponent. We might use rubber bands around game pieces, paper clips, tape, sometimes we use puff paint, like two of slick paint, which is used to raise the lines on the board like for backgammon.

We may use puff paint on game pieces like Othello or Connect 4 where you have two colors to differentiate. That way you can drill a hole through a game piece, but it’s easier to put puff paint, just on that one color just so you can differentiate yours from your opponent’s game piece. We have even adapted something like Twister where instead of colors we add textures. So green would be sandpaper; yellow would be a Dycem Pad; red would be felt.

And we use a lot of high visual contrast for people who are low vision. We mark with orange on black.

There is like Cody talked about the auditory cues of having, beepers, bells, rattles with like the soccer balls and things like that, that have the rattles in them. And sometimes if it is for something like playing basketball, we might tap the rim, or hang a beeper up in the rim so that people can localize sound, and we use the leather-bound bell basketballs and some people can retrieve their basketball on the court.

We also try to do arts and crafts projects that integrate skills and as many senses as possible. We teach a hand building pottery class, a mixed media art class, in which we use acrylic paints, and just any sort of item we can find. We mix on our acrylic paint canvas you might use, foam shapes, rocks, beads, we have even used sandpaper and coffee beans and wiki sticks, which are those little wax sticks, leather, scrapbooking appliqués, feathers, fabric, seashells. We have even done seashell sculptures.

Basically we just, we don't throw anything away. We don't see a whole lot as being trash as we always try to find ways to recycle things that we find because we are on a low budget, into other activities. You can even do trash art which is pretty popular these days, and that might be making sculptures out of throw away, but clean bottles, cans, and electronic parts.

That can be done on a canvas, or you can construct things into like three dimensional sculptures.

I have seen structures, and cityscapes and all sorts of things made out of trash art. We also, because we are on limited budget and we don't throw anything away, we stockpile all kinds of what other people would consider trash. Even like cardboard and boxes, you name it we will recover those boxes with tissue paper and paint them, and create jewelry boxes out of that, so we just find...

Trash is always going to have a place in a potential activity like team building or art or craft activities, and if you guys have any questions about specific adaptations or craft ideas or art ideas, start texting them and we will answer them as we go, or we may answer them at the end, and Debbie is going to give some ideas about some cheap and easy crafts that anything can do.

Cody Hatfield Love the suggestion about Christmas wreaths out of soft drink six pack plastic - that’s good. Not a bad idea.

Debbie Braungart

Hi this Debbie and just like Cody mentioned earlier, a lot of the benefits we discussed for recreations apply to the crafts as well. Crafts are one of favorites personally, because their simple, typically quick and instant gratification activities. You can get most of the stuff pretty cheap or like Jody said, use recycled material. It is always fun to make craft for different holidays and occasions, and a lot of the ones I am going to talk about are crafts that be easily tweaked to fit the different holiday themes, and for that reason they are very versatile and we can discuss how to tweak those to fit the various seasons as we go along.

I would like to discuss a few examples of those kinds, crafts on a budget. The first one I am going to talk about is rice heat packs, and basically what those are is a cloth bad filled with rice and scented oils. You put those in the microwave or in the freezer to use for aches and pains. A lot of times you will see these in the malls in kiosks or specialty stores around holiday seasons. The ones they sell typically have a lot of ingredients and oils; however we kind of simplify it and make the basic version at home which is a lot more simple.

Some people if you like to sew you can sew the cloth bags, put the rice inside, add the oil, but to make it easier if neuropathy is an issue or you just want

©2012 The Hadley School for the Blind Page 18 of 45 2012-05-22-Recreation something more simple or to use with kids, you can use a tall sock. Put the rice inside the sock, add the oil, put it in the microwave, in the freezer, that’s an easy adaptation for something like that. The next one we like to do is gifts in a jar and what I mean by that is sometimes we make M&M cookies in a jar, and what it is, is like layered ingredients.

For example you would layer the flour, the sugar, the M&M and all the ingredients you have in there and you can decorate it with holiday ribbon to match the season and you just include the instructions for baking to go along as a gift item for someone. So that is a good idea, also for hot cocoa you can do the same thing - add all the ingredients for the cocoa, home-made gift great for holiday gifts and things like that.

Another thing that is another jar craft is bath salts. We use a couple different kinds of salts, Epsom Salt, sea salt, again the essential oils. You can use different scents for different holidays like maybe peppermint for Christmas time; Lavender for Mother’s Day, you can use recycled jars for things like that. Again decorate with a ribbon, and put the ingredients, so the person you are giving it to can remake that if they’d like to, and give it as a gift as well.

We also frequently make magnets - this is another very inexpensive craft to make. You can purchase those flat marbles typically from the dollar stores. You can get a circle punch where you can punch out paper or magazine print or colored construction paper. You would just glue the paper to the backside of the flat marble, put a magnet on it, put them in small bags, and give those as gifts for different holidays as well.

Once again a lot of these things you can purchase one or two things, use a lot of recycled things around the house and kind of mass produce gifts, for lack of a better word, using recycled materials, and you don’t have to spend a lot of money. I see a question.

Cody Hatfield There is a question, Debbie, about sewing. I know you haven't quite talked about that, but sewing with needles, and threading needles, as far as both hand sewing and with a sewing machine, there are techniques out there though, huh?

Debbie Braungart We teach a lot threading techniques for needles. Typically we try to use the least restrictive way first, which would be just trying to hand sew it. A lot of times when you run the needle through your pointer

©2012 The Hadley School for the Blind Page 20 of 45 2012-05-22-Recreation finger, and your thumb, and you roll it around, as you push it up, the needle will be facing one direction, typically away from you, and you can actually thread it through. We also use the floss threading method, and we will put resource information about this stuff up as well.

Last but not least we have the… I can't remember the name; I think it starts with an I - the sewing device. The name has slipped me right now, but it is a loop threader you can purchase. That is another method as well for threading needles, yeah there it is – [enfila]. Thank you.

A couple other things I wanted to mention - homemade soap. We use Dove soap and we grate it with a grater, add a little bit of grated oatmeal, essential oils, and you melt it all in the microwave, then it will rehardens up inside of a mold and those are great for gift giving. Loom knitting - which some of you may recognize. That was popular back in the seventies – it used to be called rake knitting. It is something that is coming back. You can make beanies, blankets, scarves, purses - all those sorts of things, and it doesn’t need any adaptation. It has a loom which is a round plastic or wooden device that is used for knitting.

You basically wrap the yarn around the different loops on the item and that’s how you’re doing the knitting rather than with a needle. Crocheting as well, crocheting with yarn and a hook, very minimal cost, and used for lots of different things. So like I said before, they do make great gift ideas, and typically you can purchase one or two things, find the rest of the things around the house, or use recycled materials. Then you can mass-produce, but once again personalize the items for gift giving.

Of course there are other crafts that we didn't talk about today that do require most substantial material and investment, but a lot of the ones we talked about are great for kids, used for skill building. Like I said before, we will have tons of internet resources, we will be posting a resource list on Hadley, and also be give some of the sites we use for craft ideas.

Cody Hatfield Yeah, and to go with that, Debbie, I think a lot of people it looks like have been posting some great ideas so far and I’m seeing some of the websites that we use as well – everything from Kraft Korners to somebody is posting a few others here – as well as ideas – favorite crafts and stuff. All great ideas going on this.

With the loom knitting, it looks like somebody was talking about a little bit harder maybe on some of the smaller looms to get going, and if it’s a beginning thing maybe starting on a larger size.

Debbie Braungart On a larger size, yeah, just to get the motion down.

Cody Hatfield Somebody also mentioned going back to some of the sewing stuff that there’s also the Hexe Needle Threader as well. So all great things. As we go on here…

Debbie Braungart I saw too that somebody was curious about duct tape activities and there’s all kinds of books on stuff like that. But if you Google “ductivities” or go to www.duckbrand.com – it’s D-U-C-K-B-R-A-N-D.com –

©2012 The Hadley School for the Blind Page 23 of 45 2012-05-22-Recreation they have all kinds of ideas for decorations, crafts, art – all kinds of stuff that you can do with duct tape. But, yeah, that’s a cool idea as well.

And for the other person who was asking about the trash art. If we use a canvas, we’re going to use a hard 8x10 painting canvas and keep sending those texts and we’ll answer them as we go and if not, we can revisit at the end. Jewelry making.

Jody Royder Jewelry making is one of the ones that’s a little more pricey. You do have to invest a little bit more as far as the materials go. However, one of the more recent ones that we’ve done here is Morse Code jewelry and it’s sort of like Morse Code used way back when.

You can use round beads for the dots and long beads for the dashes and make hidden code necklaces and bracelets and things like that, which is kind of a cool idea. So we’ve done that recently.

Cody Hatfield And let’s go back a little bit and we can talk more about it at the end if there are still questions as far as the golfing – I’ve seen multiple comments on there. But golfing – the question was asked about how do you find your ball. Typically, as people have already

©2012 The Hadley School for the Blind Page 24 of 45 2012-05-22-Recreation commented on that – most of the time you’re going to be there with somebody, either a guide, friend, family to tell about that, but you can also be using contrasting colors for your golf balls and stuff. But hopefully that kind of answers that question.

Like I said, if there are still questions about any specific sports or anything we talked about previously at this point, we can definitely address those at the end of the seminar.

Debbie Braungart So as far as arts and crafts go, it’s a great way to relax in addition to activities like creative writing and journaling and we did mention that we would talk about ways to de-stress, so creative writing and journaling are also ways to calm and focus your mind.

And there’s also a lot of activities like that like yoga and meditation and tai chi that you can take in your community. So getting on community activities, here at Criss Cole we do a whole bunch of community activities and sports and outdoor community activities are a great way to practice and integrate blindness and mobility skills for those of you who are newly blind.

These activities help develop confidence through accepting challenges and overcoming fears. Oftentimes through facing our fears, we discover that we have a hidden talent in that area and that often leads to new hobbies and interests and sometimes even a new vocation.

So a lot of times people tell us that they’ve been sedentary since their blindness and are just paralyzed by fear and don’t want to leave their house. If you’re uncomfortable with risk, you can just take those risks in small steps and that might be doing something like going to a buffet or taking a community class that is just something you ordinarily just wouldn’t do.

As far as taking those risks, you can calculate risk by thinking of what’s at stake. If you’ve always wanted to do something like skydiving, there can be a lot at stake. Some of you would say there’s health risks involved in doing something like that, but as far as that goes, what’s at stake is that you can play it small and have regret about things that you’ve always wanted to try or you can just get out there and try them and see what happens.

You may succeed; you may fail but either way, there’s a lot to gain in terms of life experience and personal growth. We lead activities all the time. We’re event

For example, if we want to go try rock climbing, we know that maybe there’s a chance of rain – we’re going to try to find an indoor climbing gym and sometimes that might be your local school or university, but also plan on doing the real thing. Join an outdoor group. There’s many of them out there for special interests like rock climbing and things like that.

In regard to old hobbies, pretty much whatever your favorite activity was before you went blind, you can still do it. It just requires motivation and a little bit of problem solving and creativity. And you really know what your favorite activities are and how to adapt those. If you want to take a class in the community at like Michael’s Crafts or Joann’s Fabric and you did crochet before, or you want to learn quilting, you can still do that.

You might use appliqués instead, but you need to maybe be able to provide those employees with ways that they can help you make those adaptations. So really what you’re looking at is what’s available in your community. Do you have a Parks and Recreation Department? Do they have adaptive or therapeutic

A lot of times you can do learn archery and shooting and do water aerobics and meditation with Parks and Rec. or Parks and Wildlife, depending on outdoor or not. And then there are senior centers that have oftentimes free tai chi classes, dance classes - I saw somebody mention Zumba earlier – and craft classes.

As far as those adaptations for things like tai chi and dance that require a lot of movement, maybe you need to pay for or take some private classes initially to learn those steps and then after three or four of those and you’ve learned the basic steps, then you’re jumping into a regular group community class.

There’s also local interest stores like we talked about Michael’s and Joann’s that teach all sorts of crafts like quilting, crocheting, knitting. Maybe there’s a yarn store that has a sewing circle in your hometown. Cabela’s has fishing classes; REI has classes on gardening and bicycling and camping.

Cody Hatfield Yeah, basically use your local resources. We’re talking about outdoor stores right there but the local outdoor stores or whatever chain you have available –

©2012 The Hadley School for the Blind Page 28 of 45 2012-05-22-Recreation most of the time they’re going to have some offerings as far as classes or intro course kind of stuff to get you at least information you need.

Debbie Braungart Okay, so if you don’t have a strong peer or family support system, you can rely on your social network for transportation, information and resources. And again that network is all the more reason to be involved in the community through interest clubs like we said – the Midnight Ringers and blind bowling league or organizations to include blindness and low vision groups or volunteering.

And we also say we touch on volunteering and how that can help develop social and vocational skills. Volunteering can not only be fun, but it’s a way to give back to your community. It helps create public awareness that people with disabilities are still an integral part of society and it helps to boost self- confidence and self-worth.

Oftentimes we find with our students that there’s a shift into a more positive attitude about how we perceive our life. And back to vocation, volunteer experiences are a great way to network with others, to find out about job leads, to gain knowledge and experience to add to your résumé. It can improve

Some examples of volunteer work you can do is if you have a talent like playing piano or guitar, go to your local nursing home and maybe you can put together a talent show or just perform for them during their recreation time. Or you can help teach arts and crafts or visit with residents. At animal shelters we’ve done things like socializing animals and washing food bowls.

There are city beautification projects; there’s homeless shelters where you can prepare and serve food; there are school supply drives; charities specific to interests like Special Olympics or Senior Olympics.

As far as barriers go, what are your barriers to recreation? You guys let us know. Text us your questions. There are external barriers or public attitudes, lack of facility accessibility; lack of transportation. Then there’s individual barriers like lack of budget resources where you can sometimes join programs on sliding scale.

You may have limited activity skills; lack of awareness of recreation options in your town; lack of a support

©2012 The Hadley School for the Blind Page 30 of 45 2012-05-22-Recreation system or shyness. And as far as what to do about that, as far as the social skill stuff, it might be your own shyness or social skills or could be the facility employees.

So as far as what to do about that, you can request activities that allow for integration at your Parks and Recreation Department; you can offer employee training on disability awareness; adaptive techniques or solutions on how to adapt activities; how to be a more inclusive program.

You can teach about blindness etiquette. We’ve gone to a local university therapeutic recreation program students and had our students talk to the class about what is and isn’t acceptable.

Cody Hatfield Yeah, and that’s exactly… somebody brought up kind of public attitudes is sometimes a barrier. That’s where we really try and communicate that to our students, our consumers, that a lot of times it’s up to them to change those public attitudes, to get out there and advocate for themselves and kind of show people what they’re capable of doing and what others should be just assuming as just normal activity for anybody.

And so that’s part of why we do things with our surrounding universities. We try to connect up with them. It gives our students and consumers a chance to both kind of get an idea, communicate network with these students that are currently in college and a lot of times they are in a recreation or therapeutic rec. course or major.

But we get out in the public and we’re doing things visibly for the public to see, hey, here we are as a group of individuals who are blind and we’re going rafting or we’re going climbing. We’re out there in the community and stuff. But public attitude is definitely a huge thing.

Debbie Braungart You can be an advocate for the blind community and activity programmers for Parks and Rec. and places like that. They just may not realize the need for inclusive programming in the community. So you gotta let them know and tell them what you want. You can partner with organizations like The Key Club, Lions Club, Boy Scouts.

Check to see if your local college offers a recreation program and has students interested in helping out, doing internships or field works. And if it’s limited activity skills that are holding you back, you can

Again, we were referring to Michael’s and Joann’s and places like that who – they’re willing to take you on in the class. You just gotta help them out and let them know what’s going to help you and what you need.

For things like – we talked about the dance and tai chi – you might need to take some private lessons to learn the initial steps and movements. Always provide employees with programming and activity ideas that can easily be adapted for various skill levels. That’s helpful and they’re usually more than welcome to take your ideas.

If it’s lack of social support that’s holding you back – maybe your family or friends limit you as a blind person, maybe they’re over-protective and controlling or not confident in your ability to function independently – you just gotta get out there and prove your abilities. Others may view you as incapable, but you don’t have to let their views affect your self- image.

So let us know what’s holding you back and we’re going to open it up for questions. That might be on a specific adaptation request, some arts and crafts ideas, building games. What organizations to join, where to buy some of the games that we have and like I said, we’re also going to post a recreation resource list on the Hadley website that will give you a lot of details on stuff like that. So opening up.

Cody Hatfield So at this time we’re going to… I’ll probably turn it over to Shirley and she’ll open it up officially. But we notice there has been a lot of questions in the chat box and so we’re going to try to go back through there and address as many of those as we can in the amount of time we have left here. But at this time I’m going to take the mic off and we’ll be both going through questions you have on the mic as well as the chat box.

Barbara Is there a place to buy patterns for crocheting that is digital so that your screen reader would read the pattern?

Cody Hatfield That’s a great question, Barbara. Not that we can think of offhand – we haven’t run into that. But these

©2012 The Hadley School for the Blind Page 34 of 45 2012-05-22-Recreation days it seems like there’s more and more stuff becoming available that could be digitized or you can find in a digital format. So I wouldn’t give up on that idea. I would say that searching out there through internet searches as well as your local craft resources…

Debbie Braungart I think Kraft Korner might be a good place to ask that question as well.

Cody Hatfield Yeah, and a lot of those sites too that we list as well – some people have already listed them in this chat box – have within the site these ongoing forums and places for people to connect and ask those questions. And a lot of times you’re going to find answers in those areas where people have a specific interest as well.

Shirley McCracken This is Shirley. There was a question in the chat room – I believe it was from Richard. He said, “Could you direct me to a good ball to use that I can play catch with children.” He said, “I can’t catch a standard ball.” Can any of you address that question?

Cody Hatfield So as far as the question, Richard, was about a good ball to be able to play catch with your child. I guess it depends how set you are on one type of ball in particular first of all cause if it can be… You can always adapt foam balls – whether it’s football, soccer ball – as far as catching football more so and then there are some softball size balls that you could cheaply adapt – just to cut into the foam and place some kind of auditory beeper, whether that is a sustaining beeping tone or even your luggage locator.

Bell balls don’t work great in our experience of playing catch because until that ball is hitting the ground or you, it is not making any sounds typically as it flies through the air.

Debbie Braungart Somebody mentioned the Nerf Ball. That’s what we typically use. You can buy them already adapted where they’re hollowed out and have a beeper inside or you can do that yourself. But they make beeping Nerf footballs and beeping Nerf basketballs and…

Cody Hatfield Soccer balls – all kinds of stuff.

Debbie Braungart

Yeah, so the key to catching that is maybe in the beginning telling somebody when you’re releasing the ball, but also protecting your face and being ready to catch with both hands in front of your face. And it takes practice, but it’s definitely doable.

There is a Frisbee that… somebody’s asking about an adapted Frisbee. There is one that’s foam that’s out there. We’ve used it and we haven’t had a lot of success with it. It’s thick foam; it’s like an inch thick and it’s smaller than the average Frisbee and I think the weight of the beeper makes it a little tough.

Cody Hatfield It kinds of throws it off balance.

Debbie Braungart Yeah, and it flies sideways and it flies in short distances, so we don’t have a solution for that one. It is sold and it’s orange for low vision but it’s for short distance toss only.

Cody Hatfield As far as purchasing talking games, somebody’s asked about where can you purchase talking games and large print games. In our resource list I know that we’ve got a number of things listed there.

Debbie Braungart As far as the large print games, if you’re looking at doing puzzles like word puzzles, large print and crossword puzzles, those are available at LS&S Group and talking games would be Maxi Aids – that would be stuff like the chess boards and other independent living aids.

Then there’s also Bop It that you can get anywhere and there’s all sorts of versions of Bop It which is kind of like the old Simon games.

Cody Hatfield We’re going to release the mic for a second in case there’s comments or questions you have through the

©2012 The Hadley School for the Blind Page 38 of 45 2012-05-22-Recreation microphone. But also we’re going to look back through some of these chat box questions. Caller Does your resource list include a book or something concerning yoga with audio description – detailed audio descriptions so one could learn the basics of yoga before going to a public yoga class?

Debbie Braungart As far as the yoga goes, there’s a man that has hand and foot placement. I’m not sure about a DVD on that but we do go to yoga here. We have many totally blind students that take yoga and we ask the teachers to be very descriptive about the movements.

Cody Hatfield And if you Google “adaptive yoga mats,” I think the same woman who puts that mat out potentially was in the process of developing an instructional DVD. But in general with those kinds of activities, I think typically what we try to talk to our consumers about, our students about, is getting in there and either talk to an instructor first about maybe getting at least a one-time… getting them a private lesson so they can get those basics down or finding somebody who has that knowledge just to get the basic terminology – those kind of things – down. And when we’re

Debbie Braungart Somebody also mentioned about the beepers breaking. They are very fragile and you definitely can’t be rough with them. That’s why I don’t like to use the beeping soccer ball. I like to use the rattles. But usually we’ll buy about five of them and then we pack them up once a year after they break and send them back to the company for them to repair. Yeah, we have that problem too and I think those beepers are about $20 apiece.

Cody Hatfield I know we’re getting down to the end of our time here. We’ll try to take maybe a couple more questions here. And somebody is saying that there is a 5-CD out developed for blind people for yoga. Instructor husband is blind.

Debbie Braungart Thank you for that.

Cody Hatfield So David sounds like he has some information on that. But there is information out on that so let me release the mic and we’ll try to take maybe one, two more questions over the mic and then we’ll probably be wrapping up here shortly.

Caller Yeah, for individuals who like low impact weightlifting, that’s a pretty good activity for those who are into body building.

Caller Maxi Aids also has a DVD called Yoga For the Blind, but right now it’s back-ordered. I don’t know when they’ll have it in stock again. Another question I had was when you mentioned Craft Corner, is that Craftcorner.com and how do you spell it?

Shirley McCracken Hello, this is Shirley from Hadley. I’m the moderator for today’s seminar. We’ll try to answer that last question there and then that’ll be it for the questions and we’ll need to wrap it up. So, Jody, you were about to answer her question, so I’m going to turn the mic over to you for a moment.

Cody Hatfield As far as the Kraft Korners, I know that David had actually dropped that link up further in the discussion. It is on our resource list but it’s spelled with a K and…

Debbie Braungart I think it’s www.thekraftkorner.com.

Cody Hatfield Yeah, www.krafterskorner.org is what it is. So multiple people just pressed that back as well as that, so www.krafterskorner.org and that’s Krafters and Korner spelled with Ks. But that is all we’ve got time for I believe today, so thank you all so much for your participation and sticking through us through this presentation.

Hopefully some of this information was helpful. And like I said, the resource list should be out shortly in the next few days. And at this time I’ll give my email address and for other questions, feel free to contact us about that.

Shirley McCracken Hi, thank you for joining us today for Seminars@Hadley. I’d like to remind everyone that this seminar will be archived with our other seminars at our website which is available 24/7. Our seminars are also popular in podcasts now and so you can download those and listen to them on your computer or your mobile devices.

Hadley offers several courses that you may be interested in – Chess for Beginners and Chess Principles and Strategies. And I understand the instructor in this course is phenomenal. There’s also

Hadley also offers 12 seminars on recreation and some of the ones that I saw that were personal interest to me would be Skiing the Fun and Safe Way. There’s a couple on woodworking and Braille Music Technology and Harvest the Benefits of Gardening.

Again, Hadley is interested in your feedback; we value it. And please let us know what you thought of today’s seminar and suggest further topics for seminars by sending us an email to: [email protected]. I want to hand the microphone back to our presenters for one last farewell and then we will conclude our seminar. So I’m going to turn the mic over to them for just a moment.

Cody Hatfield Thanks again, Shirley, and thanks again to everybody who’s listening today. Again, we really appreciate the participation. It makes these things just that much easier and it gives us a better idea of where we should be trying to focus our efforts in the future if we do this again.

I will mention that we did post all three – both Debbie, Jody and myself, Cody – our work email addresses and they are all going to be under Cody’s posting and those are at www.dars.state.tx. So if you see those, feel free to copy those down, send us an email if you have questions about any of the activities or adaptations and we’d like to hear from people. If you do have any resources that you think should be added to our list, we welcome any of those. So thank you very much. Hope you have an excellent day.

Shirley McCracken Again, thank you so much for today’s wonderful presentation. As you can see, these people are a wonderful source of information and a resource for anyone that has questions about recreation. I so value the work that they do. Again, thank you for participating today. We value your feedback. Please let us know what you thought of this seminar and suggest future topics by sending us an email at [email protected] and that concludes our seminar for today. Thank you.