Daniel Kish On Blindness, Navigating Challenges And Claiming Your Freedom

Alex Vesey: Daniel, when you were little, what did you want to be when you grew up and how did your parents support you?

Daniel Kish: I wanted to be everything, policeman, fireman, pilot, doctor. I wanted to be Batman. I went through all the same phases that everyone goes through. I wasn’t really exposed to anyone saying, “You can’t do that. You’re blind. Let’s be realistic.” My mom once told me that if I became a pilot, she wouldn’t be flying in my plane. But she never said, “You can’t do that.” So, as I got older, I wanted to be a park ranger and do forest work.

I knew for the longest time that I wanted to be a writer, a psychologist, a musician, all of which I’ve become in one manner or other. And, I do plenty of hiking on my own, too.

Vesey: So, you experienced a feeling of freedom, not limitation, from early on?

Kish: Yes, and I return to this point about freedom often because I find that it’s misunderstood. It isn’t something that’s granted. If it’s granted then it’s only grasped with conditions. Instead, freedom is something you claim for yourself. For anyone who feels restricted within or around a certain challenge that they face, it’s really up to them to find freedom and claim it for themselves in a responsible way.

Vesey: What do sighted people not get about blindness?

Kish: People often miss that it’s their impressions about blindness that are far more threatening to blind people than blindness itself. It’s actually these impressions that need fixing. We do a lot of enterprise consulting, corporate speaking, and learning and development with citizen groups to bring about a more mutual understanding of what ability challenge really means and what blindness in particular means. Part of the message is that we all face blindness in one form or another. It is endemic to every challenge that we face personally or socially, but we really can address it constructively to see more clearly through all challenges.

Vesey: What is the focus of World Access For The Blind that you started?

Kish: We support blind people to see themselves through challenges. How we do this is less about sight support, as other groups already do this. We look more specifically at how blind people can access their environment in their own way on their terms. We help blind people learn to gather information about elements and features of their environment from a distance well beyond the reach of their cane in order to manage themselves more effectively on their own terms.

This focus brought us to the development of human flash sonar, which is an analog to bat sonar, which it turns out humans can use and actually deploy the visual system of the brain to process.

Taking this one step further, we found over the years that the process we developed to help the brain reshape itself is universally useful because it neutralizes fear of the dark unknown, which is humanity’s most primal fear and greatest challenge. Challenges of every kind become less challenging when we don’t fear them.

People in different circumstances, people who are sighted, people with different ability challenges, can develop the same capacities to improve their lives, including their relationships to each other and to their own surroundings.

Vesey:  Why is now an important moment for your work?

Kish: People are looking to new ideas, new technologies, new possibilities. There are options available now that were not available 50 years ago or 100 years ago or even 25 years ago. In some ways, people are more open, although that openness is being challenged. But I think we go through these oscillations throughout history and through consciousness.

Vesey: Who are your allies and partners?

Kish: If supporting all citizens to achieve an equitable share in society’s goods, resources, services, and companionship, if that is something that we value as a society, then we’d like to engage in partnerships to do that. We need a sharing of ideas, a sharing of resources, a sharing of leadership. Tightening these networks and partnerships will allow us to bring about significant change.

Vesey: What about your work most energizes you?

Kish: Good question! It’s working with children. I’m lucky to get to help people of all ages and abilities reach for more freedom and autonomy and dignity. But I do have a soft spot for children and love watching them grow into their full selves. That would be my favorite.

Daniel Kish was just announced as one of the 2017 North American Ashoka Fellows.

RISK ZONE: DANIEL KISH

A new age of exploration

July 2013 National Geographic “The Risk Takers”

Daniel Kish does something amazing that forces us to reflect on the full potential of the human body that we do not take advantage of.

Kish was born with retinal cancer and had to have his eyes removed when he was not yet 13 months old.

Soon he began to click with his tongue, sounds that seemed to help him move. He is now 47 years old and moves mainly using echolocation, such as bats. And he does it so well that he is even able to ride a bicycle in the middle of traffic. His organization, World Access for the Blind, teaches others the art of clicking.

The original English-language article has been removed from the NatGeo archive, but we have a screengrab below from National Geographic España. If anyone would like to translate it into English and send it to us at info@visioneers.org, we’d be extremely grateful.