Visioneers News. Our work changes lives all around the world and we document the latest here. Image: Video wall featuring images from video reports done on the work of Visioneers/World Access For THe Blind.

LATEST UPDATES

WORLD SCIENCE FESTIVAL 2019

Lead Visioneer Daniel Kish part of closing panel

Daniel recently joined Academy Award-Winning Actor and Deaf Advocate Marlee Matlin and two scientists as part of the closing panel at this year’s World Science Festival in New York City. The session topic “Can We Cure Blindness & Deafness? Should We?” mixed cutting-edge science with sensory loss insights and daily living realities.

Link image contains photos of Daniel Kish, Marlee Matlin and two scientists who were part of the closing panel at the World Science Festival in New York.

Learn more about the esteemed panel participants and read an article about the panel session by the Dana Foundation on our News page about this year’s event in the Big Apple.

VISIONEERS @ SONY SXSW 2019

Daniel Kish & Brian Bushway on inclusive design

Daniel and Brian joined Aya Nishikawa, Senior Manager Sony Quality & Environmental Dept, Human Centered Design Professional and Takamoto Tsuda, Design Manager, Sony Creative Center, UI/UX designer, at the SONY WOW Studio at SXSW 2019 in Austin, Texas to talk about inclusiveness in product design, featured in SONY’s “CAVE Without A Light”.

Daniel Kish and Brian Bushway stand with the SONY Inclusive Design Team for a photo at South By SouthWest in Austin, Texas.

Learn more about the innovations from SONY’s Inclusive Design Team and the insights they learned from Daniel and Brian in videos on our News page about the multi-festival event.

BLIND ACCESS DENIED IN UK

Paralympic Champ banned by UK grocer again

Sainsbury’s is the third largest chain of grocers in the UK and is also the sponsor of the British Paralympic team. But their commitment to disabled rights is being publicly scrutinized after British Paralympic skiing champion John Dickinson-Lilley was left “shaken and humiliated” after being banned from a Sainsbury’s with his guide dog.

Blind Access Denied. Photo shows blind UK Paralympic skiing champion John Dickinson-Lilley standing with his guide dog outside a Sainsbury's Local market in London where he was denied access.

This is the second time it’s happened at the same market where a security guard refused entry and refused to get the manager in violation of the UK Equalities Act. Learn more on our News Page.

MORE UPDATES

THE SCIENCE OF SONARVISION

Training the brain to rewire to see with sound

Our collaborative research projects have validated our techniques of combining FlashSonar click echoes with additional sonic feedback from Perceptual Cane work to activate the Visual Cortex, the sight processing center in the brain. With repeated practice, the audible prompts train the brain to rewire to produce what we call SonarVision.

Link to The Science of SonarVision page. Still framwe from a CNN animation shows Senior Visioneer Brian Bushway sending out tongue clicks and receiving the FlashSonar echo waves back to paint a "fuzzy Geometry" of his front yard.

We’ve consolidated the media coverage of the related scientific papers, including those co-authored by Daniel Kish, with a new video on our Science of SonarVision page.

OUR TEXTBOOK REVIEWED

Visual Sciences expert endorsement

Gordon N. Dutton, MD, FRCOpthal, FRCS is Emeritus Professor of Visual Science at Glasgow Caledonian University in Scotland. Professor Dutton is also an Advisor and Contributor to CVI Scotland, a website devoted to helping people understand cerebral visual impairments, working towards mastery of this complex spectrum of conditions.

Photo of Dr. Gordon Dutton sitting in front of a bookcase links to his review of "Echolocation and FlashSonar.

In his review, Dr. Dutton says ” Individuals who cannot see, who have learned to navigate autonomously . . . need to teach the sighted . . . Echolocation and FlashSonar does exactly that.”

DAREDEVIL VS. BATMAN

The debate over a media-imposed nickname

Over the almost 20 years that Daniel has been teaching blind people to see in a new way, media coverage of this work invariably throws a bit of sensationalism into the headlines by referring to him as “The Real-life Bat Man”. More recently in the wake of the “Daredevil” movie, some people think he should be called “The Real-life Daredevil”.

Photolink to Daredevil vs Batman features an illustration of the two comic book characters.

We’ve examined the debate in a video on our Science of SonarVision page, from both a factual and tongue-in-cheek perspective. And Daniel weighs-in with a short essay on the matter.

PAYING IT FORWARD

Inspiration from SonarVision crosses generations

Daniel Kish’s ability to see with sound has been taught to other blind children, teens and adults for almost 20 years to the point where more than just life-changing skills and philosophies are being passed to subsequent generations of blind children. Inspiration has also been “paid forward” by the achievements of our students.

Photolink to Humoody page shows our Student Visioneer at a practice with some Seattle Seahawks NFL players.

Student Visioneer Humoody has been a living embodiment of our “NO LIMITS” philosophy. Learn about his achievements and “Paying It Forward” on his page in our Results and Impact Section.

JACK AND THE BEANSTALK

How a childhood classic inspired a blind boy

One of the earliest inspirations for Founder and Lead Visioneer Daniel Kish was hearing the story of Jack and the Beanstalk as a child. It sparked a curiosity about climbing trees that is still a passion today, and one that he has paid forward to many of his blind student Visioneers over almost two decades of SonarVision instruction.

Scott Gustafson's illustration showing Jack high up the beanstalk links to Daniel Kish explains the inspiration for his love of climbing trees.

Click on Scott Gustafson’s illustration of Jack and The Beanstalk to take you to a video excerpt on Humoody’s page from Daniel’s Keynote address at Aspire 2018 where he explains the inspiration.

VISIONEERS NORWAY

Welcome our new affiliate

Preben Mathieu-Bjerke and the rest of the Team at Visioneers Norway are busy planning SonarVision Workshops for 2019. Preben is the father of three year-old Student Visioneer Luca, and you’ll soon see a page about Luca in our Results & Impact section showing the beneficial results of early childhood Visioneering.

Photo link to Visioneers Norway Facebook page showing Daniel Kish with the Board of Directors of Visioneers Norway.

If you or someone you know in Norway have interest in being a part of the 2019 SonarVision workshops, please respond to the poll on Visioneers Norway’s Facebook Page.

NEWS ARCHIVE

Visioneers News: Changing lives in Thailand as our trainee Visioneers receive their certificates. Image shows Visioneers Daniel Kish, Brian Bushway and Thomas Tajo standing with blind Visioneer trainees at the Foundation for the Blind in Thailand under the patronage of Her Majesty The Queen, and Good Intentions, a volunteer group. The trainees are showing off their framed certificates of achieving a certain Instructor level.
WAFTB Student Earns UK Composing Honors. Image: Alexia Sloane works at her Braille reader.
WAFTB Student Wins Awarrd The The Vatican. Image: Ethan David Loch accepts the award from a Cardinal.
Brian Bushway On 'Explain Things To Me'. Image: Brian in the studio with the show hosts.

HIGHLIGHTS

WAFTB TAKES PERCEPTUAL FREEDOM TO BLIND PERSONS IN THAILAND

World Access for the Blind was privileged to recently provide a special 11- day training course in FlashSonar™ Echolocation to student mobility coaches in Thailand.

The training is a joint effort by King Prajadhipok’s Institute (Thai monarch 1925 to 1935), the Foundation for the Blind in Thailand under the patronage of Her Majesty The Queen, and Good Intentions, a volunteer group.

We offer our heartfelt condolences to members of the Thai Royal Family and the people of Thailand who are mourning the recent death of King Bhumibol Adulyadej, one of the world’s longest-serving monarchs. We feel especially privileged to have honored the late King’s adage that “To help them [the blind] obtain skills to navigate more freely on their own is tantamount to enhancing their independence.”

Our Perceptual Navigation Instructor Brian Bushway and former student Juan Ruiz not only taught the elements of WAFTB’s FlashSonar™refined form of echolocation, they also provided the student coaches with full-length navigation canes. For many of the students, it was their first opportunity to explore areas of Bangkok without being led by a guiding arm from someone.

Read the full report and see photos of the experience at our Assignment: Thailand page.

We Bring Perceptual Freedom to Thailand. Image: WAFTB Instructors work with Thai students near Temple ruins.

WAFTB STUDENT ALEXIA SLOANE NAMED CAMBRIDGE YOUNG COMPOSER OF THE YEAR

Two World Access For The Blind students have been distinguishing themselves in the field of music this year. We’ll tell you what piano prodigy Ethan Loch has been up to in a subsequent story.

First, more recently, 16 year-old composer, performer, writer, poet and linguist Alexia Sloane has earned two prestigious musical honors this year, and is becoming something of a prodigy in her own right. She has been named the Cambridge Young Composer of the Year. One of her commissioned pieces, Reverie, will be performed on 21st November at 7.30pm at Jesus College Chapel as part of the Cambridge Music Festival.

Alexia also recently learned that she was chosen from among hundreds of talented composers to be named a Composer for the National Youth Orchestra (NYO) of Great Britain.

Alexia has studied FlashSonar™ and full-length cane navigation with WAFTB President and Lead Perceptual Navigation Instructor Daniel Kish. Prior to that she was primarily guided around by someone. One of Daniel’s goals in the coming year will be to get Alexia together with Ethan Loch to see what their composing skills might produce together.

All of us at World Access For The Blind congratulate Alexia on her well-deserved accolades! We’re very proud of her and we invite you to learn more about this incredible young woman in our full profile of Alexia Sloane.

WAFTB Student Earns UK Composing Honors. Image: Alexia Sloane works at her Braille reader.

WAFTB STUDENT ETHAN DAVID LOCH WINS PRESTIGIOUS INTERNATIONAL AWARD

The other World Access For The Blind student who’s distinguished himself in the field of music this year is piano prodigy Ethan David Loch.

Ethan was recently named the Overall Winner of the “15th Premio Internazionale “Giuseppe Sciacca” Awards for 2016. The Awards were created in 2001 by the International Association of Culture and Voluntary Work Uomo e Società (Men and Society) and named after a young student of architecture, Giuseppe Sciacca, who was noted for his sporting activities, social concern and great generosity towards others.

Ethan received this very prestigious award recently at the culmination of ceremonies in the Great Hall of the Pontifical Urban University in Vatican City in Rome, Italy.

As the Awards announcement proclaimed, “despite being blind from birth, 12 year-old Ethan excels in the sound of the piano, making unique musical performances. He is awarded for his extraordinary ability to play this instrument, which has been called “a colorful music” though, unfortunately, Ethan has never seen the colors.”

Congratulations Ethan, all of us at World Access For The Blind are very proud of you! Coming soon, you can read more and watch a few videos of the awards in our full profile of Ethan David Loch.

WAFTB Student Wins Awarrd The The Vatican. Image: Ethan David Loch accepts the award from a Cardinal.

WAFTB’S BRIAN BUSHWAY EXPLAINS FLASHSONAR™ ON ‘EXPLAIN THINGS TO ME’

World Access For The Blind has had a busy summer and fall juggling media requests to showcase our work and to provide more information about our FlashSonar™ refined version of echolocation.

WAFTB Perceptual Navigation Instructor Brian Bushway recently visited the studios of Fullscreen TV to explain a few things about our work at the proven science behind it to YouTube ‘phenoms’ Anna Akana and Brad Gage on their podcast “Explain Things To Me”.

The show recently moved to a new set that looks as though it would be right at home on the Discovery Channel with its requisite human skeleton and chalkboard rendering of Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man, albeit clad in boxer shorts and decorated in small bat drawings in honor of echolocation.

Fullscreen TV is a subscription service, so you’ll have to sign-up at their site to be able to see the over 40 minute interview. However, you can learn more about Brian’s interview in which he explains how we teach blind persons of all ages to ‘see’ with sound as our FlashSonar™ clicks light-up the brain’s visual cortex with acoustical imaging.

And you can watch a video excerpt of the interview.

Brian Bushway On 'Explain Things To Me'. Image: Brian in the studio with the show hosts.

FOLLOW VISIONEERS ACROSS SOCIAL MEDIA AND SHARE NEWS OF OUR WORK

Visit Visioneer's Facebook Page.
Visit Visioneers' Twitter Page.
Visit Visioneers' YouTube Channel.
Visit the Amazon Smile page to have your Amazon purchases support our work.

MAKE A DONATION

Donate securely via PayPal Giving Fund. No Transaction fees. 100 Percent of your donation goes to Visioneers | World Access For The Blind. PayPal account required and lets you choose between your bank account, Paypal account or credit cards from MasterCard, Visa, American Express and Discover Card. Make my Donation.
Donate via Square via Apply Pay, Android Pay, Visa, MasterCard, American Express and Discover card with PCI Data Security Standard L1. Make my donation.

DONATE BY CHECK

Please make the check payable to: World Access For The Blind and mail to:

Visioneers | World Access For The Blind

650 N. Rose Drive, #208

Placentia, CA 92870

All donations made in the United States are tax-deductible.

MAKE A COMPANY DONATION

Help us share life-changing Perceptual Freedom. We depend upon your support. Image: Silhouette of Daniel Kish walking with his full-length navigation cane.
Benevity Causes Portal. Donate to World Access For The Blind from your Company's Benevity account. Click here to link to WAFTB's page at Benevity.
World Access For The Blind U.S. Federal IRS Tax ID | EIN 330936778. Image: Silhouette of Daniel Kish walking.

THANK YOU VERY MUCH FOR YOUR THOUGHTFUL AND GENEROUS SUPPORT!

Please don't reproduce copyrighted materials without permission. Much of the material on this website has been provided to us for educational and informative purposes with kind permission of the copyright holders. None of this material is intended for commercial or promotional use. Please enjoy and share in good faith and in accordance with fair usage best practices. Thanks for your cooperation. Click on the banner to go to the Center for Media and Social Impact 's explanation of Fair Use.
Visioneers, a division of World Access For The Blind. High Performance Visioneering Solutions for Blind Persons | Blindness Professionals | Schools | Enterprise and more. +1.866.396.7035 | info@visioneers.org. Correspondence address, 650 North Rose Drive, #208, Placentia, California, 92870, USA. © 2000-2019 by Visioneers | World Access For The Blind. visioneers.org | waftb.org | Image: Visioneers logo against echoing FlashSonar waves.