When partially blind Justin Champagne was walking alone in the streets of Ruston, Louisiana, on his way to the Louisiana Center for the Blind, his walking cane unexpectedly snapped. 

“I was like ‘oh crap, I’m going to have to call them to pick me up…’ but I didn’t,” Champagne said. 

Champagne, a math graduate student at LSU, calls it “getting a flat tire” when one of his cane tips breaks because it’s a simple fix. He turned his cane tip upside down, a temporary fix that allows him to get him to his destination. 

“I flipped the cane upside down…and I made that crossing,” Champagne said. “I kept going, and I found my way back to the center with a broken cane. I just had a rush of pride. I felt like I had just conquered a mountain.”

Champagne, who grew up in the rural town of New Roads, Louisiana, earned a bachelor’s degree in physics from LSU and is now pursuing a secondary degree in math. At the age of 5, he was diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa, a rare visual impairment that progressively worsens one’s peripheral vision. He has a very small bit of usable vision in his right eye but is completely blind in his left. 

Champagne said he has run into many roadblocks as a partially blind graduate student at the university, particularly the lack of braille in Lockett Hall, which houses LSU’s Math Department.

“I noticed it pretty quickly, even though I myself am not yet a full braille reader, I still noticed it,” Champagne said.

Part of that is just the age of the building, he said. The building’s coordinator has been working with Champagne to get door signs in braille, but it’s on the university’s side to make it happen, he said.   

Hoping to see a change, Champagne feels responsible for advocating for himself and other blind people.

“I talked to my coordinator, and no one has noticed it until now, which is why it hasn’t been done,” he said.

Cracked sidewalks are also an issue, he said, finding it to be more of an inconvenience than the lack of braille signs, especially with his cane catching in the cement and jabbing him in the stomach.

Throughout high school, Champagne struggled to accept his blindness, wishing he was like the other kids. 

Being the only blind student at his school only added to his feelings of alienation. He learned braille but resisted it, feeling it was demoralizing.  He also didn’t want to use his cane, falling numerous times as a consequence.

“I didn’t really accept that I had this condition,” Champagne said. “I didn’t have the level of acceptance that I do now.”

Champagne enrolled in training at the Louisiana Center for the Blind in 2019 after realizing he needed to accept his blindness, requiring skills to live independently with a career of his own. 

When he arrived in Ruston, Champagne quickly found a community of people he empathized with.

“For the first time, it made me feel like I wasn’t alone,” Champagne said. “Up until that point, I felt like I was going through all of these struggles alone. That was the most debilitating part of it. No one should have to struggle through something alone.”

After training at the LCB, Champagne was taught how to build a cognitive map of Ruston so that he could translate the skills to his new home, something he brought to LSU when he enrolled as a graduate student in math. 

On Champagne’s cognitive map of LSU campus, Highland Road lies in the center.

Champagne’s favorite part of the program in Ruston was learning how to rely on audio cues to cross streets, intersections, four-way stops and interstates.

“[My] other favorite part was probably the cooking and the cleaning,” Champagne said. ”Well, not so much the cleaning, but cooking was fun.” 

Champagne calls his kitchen his laboratory because he loves to experiment with food. He cooks “good ‘ol” Cajun food like jambalaya, bakes loaves and cookies, and roasts different meats.

There is no one-size-fits-all approach to how blindness manifests in people, Champagne said. Non-blind people often make the misconception that blind people can’t see at all, but it is a spectrum, he said, and that no two blind people are alike.

After years of struggling to accept his condition, Champagne now tells people that he’s “living the dream.”

“I’m so proud of myself,” Champagne said. “I’ve come to really embrace who I am, every part of who I am and every part of my identity. I’ve come to embrace the unique struggles that I experience. I accept who I am, and I’m happy where I am.”