Imagine eating a spaghetti and meatball dinner with garlic bread and jello for dessert. Now imagine being blind and eating this meal.

The spaghetti slips off the fork, but you don’t know it. The meatball keeps rolling around the plate and the jello slides out of your mouth.

Linn Sorge, Services for Students with Disabilities team coordinator, said eating certain foods is challenging, but underscores these everyday challenges, saying they are “an adapted way to being independent.”

Sorge and team coordinator Sue Reinhardt discussed ways visually impaired students adapt to daily events, and how it is important to not treat people with disabilities differently.

They spoke along with two graduate students at a meeting for Neptune Hall residents Tuesday night.

Safety pins or Braille labels help visually impaired students distinguish between matching and nonmatching outfits, Sorge said. “Organization is important,” she said.

Heinhardt said visually impaired students use either white canes or trained seeing eye dogs to go to classes. Both have their advantages, she said.

In the winter it is harder for cane users to walk to classes, but students with dogs have to spend extra time grooming and feeding the dog.

Students should not try to pet the dog or call to it, Sorge said. “The dog is not a pet; it is a working animal,” she said.

Construction around campus is difficult to predict, Sorge said. “If you see someone who’s having difficulty, please ask if they need help,” she said.

“Sometimes you’ll get people who are afraid you’ll get mad” if they ask to help, said senior Barbara Klaassen, a visually impaired special education major.

“I overcame a lot of my obstacles when I came here” to NIU, said Beth Pfister, a junior English major.

Pfister said since she came here her freshman year, she has made more friends. In high school students are “not ready to deal with people who are different,” she said.