Dan Kisch and Wayfinding for the Blind

One of the most extraordinary experiences in my life was running into Dan Kisch of World Access for the Blind when I was at the Eyetap lab.  Dan is a fully blind man, who was able to use echolocation to get around.  Echolocation, up to that point in my life, I thought was limited to dolphins, who would make clicks with and listen to the echo to determine objects (such as fish or coral) in front of them.  It’s the same principle on which sonar is based upon.

I can personally testify to how amazing it was, when Dan and I would go walking down the street and he could distinguish objects like a tree, wall or space between two cars, simply by clicking with his tongue and listening to the reverberation.  For him, it was like he was visualizing the sound space around him.  He told me that this would be much harder for a seeing eye person to learn, but that he had formed a school to teach the blind, mostly kids, these skills.

Meeting Dan made me wonder how much potential there is in our existing senses if we tried just believed enough to practise it!  I hope he is very successful with his school to teach kids with visual impairement how to “see” with sound.

By the way, here is another example of a teenager who figured out how to “see” with sound all by himself.

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