At the not-so-tender age of 53, Ronald Broadnax is learning how to walk, again. In some ways, it's easier the second time, of course, because Broadnax -- a former IBM engineer from Durham who's now grappling with blindness -- already has the basics down. He'd figured out balance, coordination and the whole one-foot-in-front-of-the-other thing five decades earlier. Plus, there is no hovering parent, squealing encouragement and clapping hands, to distract him. There is only an empty hallway in which to practice and the gentle voice of Ken Swaringen to guide him.

Among the sightless and near-sightless, as well as those who teach them, this is called "mobility." When you're learning how to cope with blindness, this is lesson No. 1. If you can't move around the world, nothing else you're taught will matter much. Unless you plan to be a shut-in, you have to be able to navigate physical space.

"It's confidence-building," says Bill Apple, principal of the N.C. Rehabilitation Center for the Blind. "Somebody may lead you to the front door, but if you can get from first period [class] to second period on your own -- wow!"

Walking is different, and harder, when you cannot see. Vision plays a subtle but significant role in balance. People stay upright as they walk because they see problems -- street curbs, uneven sidewalks, tree roots, etc. -- and automatically, unthinkingly adjust for them. For the blind, however, even walking in a straight line is a challenge. Sighted people make endless tiny course corrections as they cross a street or travel a sidewalk, sometimes veering from the straight and narrow but always returning to it.

Not so with the blind. They tend to drift.

That's why Broadnax, almost immediately after arriving at the center for a 16-week training course, was turned over to Swaringen's care. And that's why Swaringen, a mobility specialist, wasted little time before putting a cane in Broadnax's hand.

To the vision-impaired, a cane is more than a tool. It is also a signaling device to others and a warning mechanism to its holder. It is a friend, a metronome and a figurative dance partner. But more than anything, it is an extension of the senses, providing touch, feel and sound. A person using a cane isn't just tapping his or her way down a sidewalk. Under Swaringen's tutelage, a cane becomes something like a Swiss army knife for the blind: a seemingly simple thing whose subtle, many uses help them to survive in hostile, uncertain terrain.

There are many other things for Broadnax to learn at the center. But all things flow from mobility.

Basic lessons

People who have neither vision problems nor the responsibility of aiding those who do often make a common, flawed assumption about the N.C. Rehabilitation Center for the Blind.

They believe that because the center is on the campus of the Governor Morehead School for the blind, it must be part of the Morehead school. It is not. They are separate operations, with different missions and administered by different state agencies. The Morehead school serves children and is, essentially, a public school for vision-impaired youngsters from across the state. The rehab center is for a limited number of adults who have lost, or are losing, their vision.

The center's staff of 35 serves about 200 people annually, Apple says. Its primary mission is to make its students employable, mostly through training in the technologies that help them compensate for their vision. Those technologies range from the old and time-honored, Braille, to the new and complex: computer programs that both speak the words on the screen, and respond to commands, for instance.

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