Blind: Using Sonar To Navigate
Daniel Kish: Seeing With Your Brain
He calls himself unremarkable which is obviously not so. He says he’s been blind since nearly birth but navigates up steps and onto the TED stage on his own without a misstep. He knows that others see him as unusually capable for a blind person and call him “batman” but calls it only living without fear and activating your brain.
The Remarkable Batman: Daniel Kish
How I use sonar to navigate the world
With his trusty long white stick, Daniel Kish, blind almost since birth walked up the stairs to the stage at the TED conference on his own without difficulty. Barely audible were tiny clicks coming from somewhere but when reaching the top he began his life story of being blind.
Daniel Kish has been blind since he was 13 months old, but has learned to “see” using a form of echolocation. He clicks his tongue and sends out flashes of sound that bounce off surfaces in the environment and return to him, helping him to construct an understanding of the space around him. In a rousing talk, Kish demonstrates how this works and asks us to let go of our fear of the “dark unknown.”