Cane-Do Attitude

The recent debate with two close friends where they were aggressively trying to sell me on the idea of using a blind man’s cane is far from the first time the suggestion reached my waxy ears.
The suggestion I remember best was around April 2010, back when I was recovering from the vitreous hemorrhage but had lost reading vision due to the improper cataract lense and was losing other overall vision due to the PRP procedure.
I was leaving the Social Security Administration and, until I was about two feet from her, did not see a woman in the double-wide hallway. Her clothes blended into the surrounding, leaving me without telltale signs of contrast.
The woman took up most of the wide hall. We're talking morbidly obese, four hundred pounds if she was an ounce. Her slow waddle removed the other sign I used to see things back then, motion, because her little feet just had more than they could readily handle.
She was obviously not used to not being seen and carried the attitude of the 400-pound gorilla in the room: she can sit wherever she wants. Even though I fully stopped short of any collision, she yelled at me to watch where I was going. I calmly apologized and said I was blind. I always try politeness as a first resort, I just don't follow through with diplomacy when it obviously will not work with specific people.
The woman continued yelling loudly to tell me that if I was blind I should be using a cane so other people could tell.
Do I need to put in more effort to compensate for other people? Do I have to rise above other people rudeness when they refuse to be polite or even mildly accommodating?
No, I don't.
I figured that if I was having a conversation with unsolicited suggestions being freely exchanged, that I should offer my own. I told her that she ought to lose weight to make more room for other people and continued on my way.
My mistake. She hadn’t been looking to exchange suggestions, only to tell me what she thought I needed to do. I never was the most socially adept person anyway. She was still screaming when the elevator doors closed.