Tuesday, November 19, 2024

Daniel Kish: No Sight, No Limits, The Blind Teach a New Way to See

December 19, 2011 by  
Filed under VidStyle

They call him the real life Batman. His claim to fame is that he clicks. His organisation, World Access for the Blind, trains the visually impaired to achieve greater freedom through echolocation, a technique that simulates a bat’s night vision of perceiving the environment through sound.

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ABOUT Daniel Kish

“Daniel Kish holds Master’s degrees in Developmental Psychology and Special Education. He has been blind since he was one-year-old, can navigate his bike through traffic-filled streets of southern California, trek through the woods solo, or locate a building over a thousand feet away—all using a click of his tongue and a technique he calls FlashSonar.

He has collaborated with scientists and perception experts to develop the first systematic curriculum to train others in this technique of echolocation (the use of echoes from sound waves to create a sensory map of an area), allowing sight-impaired individuals to achieve total independence.

But the most remarkable thing about Daniel isn’t his sensory talent. It’s the way he has used it to empower sight-impaired individuals through World Access for the Blind. “We work with hundreds of thousands of students all over the world who cannot open their eyes. Yet the students we work with don’t harken to the ideas of fear and limitation and restriction. We have found a way to help them open their eyes, to reclaim their freedom, to re-establish their own capacity to direct their lives in the manner of their own choosing.”

CEO of World Access for the Blind, he has conducted hundreds of public seminars, university faculty workshops and professional development trainings. Collaborating with families, school districts, rehabilitation agencies, and scientists, Daniel has positively impacted the lives of hundreds of children who are deaf-blind, on the autistic spectrum, and those with sensory integration disorders.”

The VIDEO

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