This book has been a work in progress. In the spring of 2000 I started
this project and began to collect data and conduct interviews. I copied
every article I could find in the Journal of Visual Impairment and
Blindness and its predecessors Outlook for the Blind and New Outlook for
the Blind. I was fortunate to locate Blindness the annual publication of
the American Association of Workers for the Blind. One of the greatest
finds was the library at the American Foundation for the Blind. The
library contains dozens of volumes related to orientation and mobility.
Within two years I had amassed a considerable collection of resources. I
began working through the materials and along the way prepared some
papers for various conferences. A dramatic increase in administrative
responsibilities, as well as the tyranny of meeting grant deadlines,
diverted me from giving concentrated effort to this book. All that
changed as I reduced my workload in order to devote almost all my
efforts over the past nine months to this project.