Michael Bailey was born able to see, but in his early 50s he contracted glaucoma and began to lose his sight. For the lifelong Cottonwood resident, the town he grew up in started to disappear, and he had to learn to adjust to nding his way around town with limited use of his eyes.
“It’s a complete life changing event, going legally blind,” Bailey said. “As sighted people walking around, that’s probably one of the last things that people really think of, so it really becomes unnoticeable, or really unaware for a lot of the sighted people.”
In March of this year, Bailey formed the Verde Valley Council for the Blind, a new chapter of the Arizona Council for the Blind, along with about a dozen people in town. The council has been meeting twice a month in a room at Verde Valley Medical Center to discuss issues that blind residents in the area face. At a meeting on Thursday, Oct. 11, the new advocacy group lobbied the Cottonwood City Council, hoping to make the city more friendly to the visually impaired.
The group’s requests focused on two main issues — sidewalks, and crosswalks. Being unable to drive, Cottonwood’s blind population is forced to walk on the sidewalks, or to take public transit, in order to get around town. Bailey praised the Cottonwood Area Transit bus system, which he views as essential for the visually impaired. But he said that the sidewalks have some issues that make them hard to navigate without sight.
“Our first project has been walking around on virtually all the different side- walks around Cottonwood, making note of the damage there is — things like the sidewalks being cracked, parts of the sidewalks being missing, overhead branches, or weeds overgrowing the sidewalks — anything that causes the disabled to be hampered instead of having clear mobility,” Bailey said.
The group provided an assessment of sidewalk accessibility to the City Council in May.
In addition to getting side- walks improved, the group requested the addition of sound alerts to crosswalks, which would allow residents who cannot see traffic lights or visual walk signals more ease in crossing busy streets.
“Most of the visually impaired can’t even see across the street,” Bailey said. “I can just barely even
