AMARILLO, Texas (KVII) \u2014 A tradition that began in 1964 in Austin, Texas, and has since grown nationally is now taking off in Amarillo. This is Amarillo\u2019s White Cane Day celebration.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo me, White Cane Day is learning how to be independent; life doesn\u2019t stop,\u201d said Antonio Chavez, advocate for the blind and vision impaired.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhite Cane Day or white cane in general is independence; it gets you to where you need to go,\u201d said Jose Briseno, advocate for the blind and vision impaired.<\/p>\n
The celebration at Region 16 on Wednesday is all about connecting resources to those who are blind or visually impaired.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can speak to them as a human and ask them what they need because they know better than what we do,\u201d said Winston Smith, certified orientation mobility specialist (COMS). So, start treating them as people and not ignoring them, and don’t be afraid to ask questions.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDo you feel the city of Amarillo and the state of Texas have enough services for people who are blind or visually impaired?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI honestly feel there are enough resources; it\u2019s just that using the same resources to make things a little more accessible in general,\u201d said Briseno.<\/p>\n
\u201cI believe there is a good amount, yes,\u201d said Chavez. \u201cIt did take a bit of finding PILC Panhandle Independent Living Skills and working with the Texas Workforce Commission and seeing what they have to offer. I do believe they do have a good amount, it just takes the gumption to get there and making sure you\u2019re advocating for yourself to get those resources.\u201d<\/p>\n
There are a number of other National White Cane Day observances going on throughout the state of Texas on Oct. 15. The one in Amarillo is believed to be the only one in the Texas Panhandle.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"AMARILLO, Texas (KVII) \u2014 A tradition that began in 1964 in Austin, Texas, and has since grown nationally…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5619,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[5798,2648,132,134,133,5799,5797,495,27,5796,5795],"class_list":{"0":"post-5618","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-austin","8":"tag-advocates","9":"tag-amarillo","10":"tag-austin","11":"tag-austin-headlines","12":"tag-austin-news","13":"tag-celebration","14":"tag-independence","15":"tag-resources","16":"tag-texas","17":"tag-visually-impaired","18":"tag-white-cane-day"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5618","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5618"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5618\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5619"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5618"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5618"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5618"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}