White Cane Day, from the heart of Texas and beyond

Annually, various organizations have a special day or month they use to promote awareness about their particular disability. I try to include these here when I am aware of them.

October 15 of each year has been officially designated as White Cane Day. I have known this for some time now, but that’s because I’m in the loop on this one. There is a long history behind the white cane and the national designation of White Cane Day has been in place for more than 40 years.

I know it might be a little early to promote a day that is almost two months away, but there is a reason for doing this. See below for an important information that will be upon us in only eleven days.

Austin, Texas has the largest White Cane Day celebration in the nation. There is now also a web site to share information about this year’s Austin event.

whitecaneday.org
is the web site for information about White Cane Day in general, and about the planned celebration in Austin, in particular. There are a couple of good informational links about the history of the white cane.

There are also very reasonably priced T-shirts for sale on the site for marking this year’s Austin celebration. If you’re in the Austin area and interested in ordering shirts there, hurry up as orders must be placed by noon on Aug. 31.

I found the following Information on the web site about the T-shirts interesting:

“Students at the Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired were invited to produce artwork depicting what White Cane Day meant to them. We selected nine pieces of artwork for the front of this year's shirt. The design is a collage of what kids created for this empowering day! The back of the shirt will have a raised-dot contracted Braille statement: "I'm not just blind � I'm out of sight!"
"Being blind is something to be proud of!! I know, because I am!!" This statement also will be in print for non-Braille readers. There will be a tiny Braille quote on the back at the bottom of the T-shirts stating, "Ready to work � ready to contribute." This notation was on last year�s shirt, and the plan is to continue to put this on T-shirts each year. “

I just love that line…”will be in print for non-braille readers!”