Daniel Kish is a man of many talents. He is able to ride a mountain bike on precipitous dirt trails, camp in the wilderness (alone), swim, dance and is even a skilful cook. What may shock most of us is this: Kish has been sightless since he was a year old. Born with retinoblastoma, a genetically-determined aggressive cancer that affects the retina, Kish had to have both his eyes removed at the age of 13 months to save his life. Kish wears prosthetic eyeballs; thin, convex shells made of acrylic plastic with light brown irises. What Kish is able to do is essentially see with his ears, the same way bats can see in the dark.
To get a picture of his surroundings, Kish produces a brief, sharp click with his tongue. The sound wave it produces travels at a speed of more than 1000 feet per second, bouncing off every object around him and returning to his ears at the same rate, albeit at a lower volume. Kish had developed this technique intuitively at the age of two, something which he called “FlashSonar”- otherwise known as echolocation.
Echolocation is commonly known as the radar that bats use to navigate the night skies. Having honed his skills since young, Kish is unusually adept at it. In fact, watching him going about his daily duties, one would not be able to identify his disability at all. He preaches complete independence, eschewing all conventional thoughts that the blind need to depend on the sighted for anything more than the most regular tasks. Sadly, Kish’s amazing achievements are not appreciated by all. While some in the blind community hold him in high regard, others consider him disgraceful for using something deemed abnormal.
Undeterred, Kish’s dream is to help all sufferers of sight impairment to see the world as clearly as he does. Together with a couple of coworkers, Kish runs the World Access for the Blind, a nonprofit organization that offers training on how to see using echolocation. While Kish is not the first blind person to use echolocation, he was the first to painstakingly document the process, breaking it down and figuring how it can be taught.
However, echolocation’s primary liability is its inability to detect holes on the ground, or even small drop-offs. Other issues with echolocation include park benches disappearing behind stone walls. For this reason, training in echolocation is not without injury; one has to expect the occasional gash or broken bone. Kish himself has once fractured the heel of his left foot jumping from a rock and has even broken a few teeth.
Kish has absolutely no doubts with regards to his abilities. Raised with almost no dispensation for his impairment, he has the amazing ability to take anything apart and put it back together. He was named “best brain” in middle school and graduated with a GPA close to 4.0 in high school. He attended the University of California Riverside and went on to earn 2 master’s degrees in developmental psychology and special education, following which he became the first person in the United States to be fully certified as an orientation and mobility specialist (someone hired by the impaired to get around). With his amazing achievements, Kish is an inspiration to all. Even we in the sighted community could learn a thing or two from Kish. With his indomitable spirit, Kish has proved that with a little adaptability, even the blind can see.
For the entire story of Daniel Kish, be sure to check out the full article over at Men's Journal. You won't be sorry you did. [Men's Journal]
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