About Grace Ambrose Zaken
MICRO-BIO
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Coordinator and professor at Hunter College of The City Unviersity of New York. My field is orientation and mobility, it is the study and practice of navigating the environment with limited or no vision. My research area is currently focused on the...More
Coordinator and professor at Hunter College of The City Unviersity of New York. My field is orientation and mobility, it is the study and practice of navigating the environment with limited or no vision. My research area is currently focused on the positive impact wearable canes are making in children with mobility visual impairment and blindness. Mobility visual impairment and blindness is a term of art that refers to the inability to use one's vision to avoid obvious obtastacles in the path ahead. My work has clearly demonstrated that there is no advantage to moving about wihtout path information for blind babies learning to walk or anyone. Moving about without path information leads to sudden shifts in balance and sudden impact with objects. It is a universal truth that noone likes unexpected contacts with objects or people. Wearable canes reduce these unexpected contacts, by wearning their canes, children five and younger with mobility visual impairment or blindness experience confidence in their next step. They begin to run and play. Those who have some vision, begin to use that vision for fun and to learn about the world around them. This new cane addresses the needs of a very small population of learners, but the impact it has on their development is massive. Children five and younger with mobilty visual impairment and blindness are able to reach their developmental potential, because they are finally provided with with path information that their impairment robs them of. Wearable canes are akin to wheelchairs. The recommended usage guidelines is blind children should wear their canes all day everyday. There is no advantage to taking the wearable cane off blind children, except to sleep. Just like there is no advantage to taking a paralyzed child out of a wheelchair. This debunks the myth of the "seer" that is ascribed to the blind. That somehow blind people acquire a sixth sense and can use their hearing like bats. To be clear, there is no prize handed out when someone gets a disability. There is only the human ability to overcome odds and to make the best out of a bad situation. The wearable cane improves children with mobility visual impairment and blindness ability to move about because it provides them with vital information about the path ahead. Is the path blocked by a wall? Does the texture or suface of the path change examples sidewalk to grass, flooring to carpet? Is there a set of steps going down in the middle of a hallway? The wearable cane provides two steps of warning before the down step- without it, the child will tumble down the steps. The negitive impact of these tumbles, stumbles and running into walls results in blind children avoiding walking. Then teachers say, "they are not motivated to walk because they cannot see", but they walked at two, why were they walking at age two and not age three - their blindness hasn't changed. The answer, they learned that walking results in unwanted contacts.
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EXPERIENCE
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Hunter College of The City University of New York
- Associate Professor
- Special Education
- January 2020 to Present
EDUCATION
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Peabody College, Vanderbilt University
- Doctorate
- August 1993 to December 1997
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