According to TED.com: “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.’ ”

“Daniel Kish expands the perceptual toolbox of both blind and sighted humans by teaching echolocation — the ability to observe our surroundings via sound.”

“When he was 13 months old, Daniel Kish lost both eyes to retinal cancer. Driven by fearless curiosity, he taught himself to navigate by clicking his tongue and listening for echoes — a method science calls echolocation, and that Kish calls FlashSonar.”

“In 2000, Kish founded World Access for the Blind as a platform to teach FlashSonar, along with other methods that the blind can use to “see” and that the sighted can use to expand their awareness. Kish and many researchers believe that echolocation produces images similar to sight, and allows the visually impaired to transcend the limited expectations of society. ”

Enjoy this inspiring talk.

 

For those of you not familiar with TED Talks here is a brief summery from www.ted.com: “TED is a small nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment, Design. Since then its scope has become ever broader. Along with two annual conferences — the TED Conference in Long Beach and Palm Springs each spring, and the TEDGlobal conference in Oxford UK each summer — TED includes the award-winning TEDTalks video site, the Open Translation Project and Open TV Project, the inspiring TED Fellows and TEDx programs, and the annual TED Prize”

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I look forward to your thoughts and comments!