Make tracks to travel
Learn about GPS device and other tools
by Terry Moakley, Susan
Olsson and Lydia Peterson
In Kalamazoo, Michigan,
an older woman who has
a spinal cord injury and who uses a power wheelchair wants to visit
a friend across town. But she doesn’t have the skills to take
public transportation. With the help of a travel trainer at the local
independent living center, she learns to make the trip.
In Tacoma, Washington, a young man with a cognitive disability receives
travel training services from his local transit agency to learn how
to use fixed-route buses safely and on his own. As a result, he is
able to commute daily across town to his new job at the YMCA.
In New York City, a young woman with cerebral palsy and a speech impairment
approaches high school graduation with the promise of a job but with
no way to get there. After an assessment by professional travel trainers,
this young woman receives intensive training to use a primary and an
alternate subway route independently to her work site.
Success stories like these occur each day in communities across the
nation. Individuals with a variety of physical and developmental disabilities,
as well as seniors, learn to use fixed-route public transportation
safely and independently from travel instructors and travel trainers
who are members of the Association of Travel Instruction (ATI).
At ATI’s August
15-17, Minneapolis conference, travel instructors and travel trainers
and other attendees will hear presentations on developments in their
profession. One session will focus on the polytraumatic injuries
being sustained by many Iraq and Afghanistan conflict veterans, and
their need for appropriate travel training services.
Individuals with disabilities
and seniors learn travel skills while following a specific route,
typically to a school, job, or recreation site. Travel training professionals
must be able to determine how different disabilities affect a person’s
ability to travel. These professionals must develop appropriate methods
to teach travel skills dependent upon individual needs.
Other presentation topics
include the development of a GPS device to enhance successful travel
for persons with developmental disabilities; the impact of certain
medications on disabled persons’ ability
to use public transportation safely; tools for growing a high school-based
travel training program; progress in the development of a factory-built
wheelchair accessible taxi/ADA paratransit vehicle; a round table discussion
on “stranger/danger” issues facing travelers with varying
disabilities; and, a second round-table session about providing travel
training services in real/perceived high crime areas.
ATI also includes a networking
social event—a forum in which
travel instructors and travel trainers informally share best practices
with one another—and a Saturday evening closing banquet complete
with entertainment. ATI conference registration information is available
at www.travelinstruction.org ![]()
ATI is an inclusive association, with membership open to anyone interested
in the accessible transportation field.
