Blind and travelling solo: a woman’s YouTube travel show celebrates public transport for the visually impaired across the world

Mona Minkara has the highest praise for Tokyo’s subway network, which made travelling as a blind person easy, and also rates Singapore’s MRT

She thinks many blind people don’t travel because they fear getting lost; once she overcame that fear, the engineering professor says, she felt completely free

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Mona Minkara stands in front of a tall red gate at the Fujiyoshida Sengen Shrine in Japan. The bioengineering professor films her travels on YouTube to show how the visually impaired can journey on their own using public transport. Photo: courtesy of Mona Minkara

Published: 12:45pm, 12 May 2020Updated: 12:45pm, 12 May 2020

Mona Minkara’s east Asian travels begin as soon as her plane touches down at Singapore’s Changi Airport. A camera follows her every move.

Pulling her suitcase with one hand and proudly displaying her long white cane in the other, Minkara exits the arrivals terminal and asks staff for directions to ground transport. Later, when transferring from a bus to a nearly empty MRT (Mass Rapid Transit) station, her cane strikes a line of raised tiles on the pavement. She pauses and glides her cane across the ridges.

“Oh, look at that, cane guides,” Minkara, who narrates her videos in real time, says. “Whenever there’s a turn, these cane guides create a grid on the ground, so I know there is an option to turn.”

The tactile paving leads Minkara first to a lift equipped with Braille buttons, and then down to the train platform.

Minkara and her friend and camerawoman Natalie Guse in a Tokyo ramen shop. Photo: courtesy of Mona Minkara

In the YouTube series Planes, Trains and Canes, Minkara takes viewers to five cities on three continents to show how a visually impaired person can independently travel by largely relying on public transport, which she says is “undervalued” by many car-loving Americans.

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