Waiting outside the hotel room for Daniel Kish to answer the door bell, I wondered, “Will Daniel open the door himself?”
Another thought nudged me: “Probably, someone else will let us in.”
It did not take more than half a minute before the door opened and I found myself staring at Kish.
Walking into the room, I realised that Kish was alone. And I watch in amazement as he moved around confidently. That is when I remind myself that Kish’s limits know no bounds.
For this Californian has hiked in the Swiss Alps and the highlands of Scotland, besides exploring the table mountains of South Africa, not to forget bushwalking expeditions in Australia.
That is no mean achievement for someone who was born with an aggressive form of cancer that robbed Kish of his vision.
Daniel Kish, president of World Access for the Blind, (a not-for-profit organisation based in California) travels the world over working with the visually challenged. He guides them in developing their strengths through echolocation, a technique that enables them to navigate and find freedom to do what they please.
Echolocation is used by bats and dolphins for navigation and for foraging.
Kish says he has been using this technique “as far as I can remember,” and proceeds to elaborate: “Sound waves are similar to light waves that carry energy and are reflected off physical surfaces. When that energy returns to the observer, the brain captures the patterns of the reflected energy and from these patterns it is able to extract information about those physical surfaces.”
“In case of echolocation,” Kish says, “you are using sound instead of light. It is essentially the same process. Sound waves are emitted by clicking the tongue and it gets reflected off physical surfaces. The brain receives the sound energy and learns to recruit the visual system of the brain to analyse the auditory data and to construct images. Simply put, the brain has switched from the eyes to the ears. It is the visual system still involved but takes the information from the ears instead of the eyes. And, the brain learns to use sound instead of light to build an image.”
Kish was in Chennai recently after delivering a TEDx presentation in Mumbai and conducting a workshop for the visually challenged at Hyderabad University. This is his second visit to Chennai. Last year he came down to work with south Indian actor Vikram, who was playing a visually challenged person in the film, “Thandavam”. Kish trained Vikram for this role.
Set up in 2006 in California, World Access for the Blind has helped around 8,000 students in more than 30 countries to grow from being passive recipients, often marginalised and restricted, to active contributors free to achieve a quality of life of their own choosing.
Sharing his experience of working with a little boy in Scotland, Kish recalls, “When I met him in 2007 Danyl was 11. He had lost his vision at 8 following an asthmatic attack during which he could not be taken to hospital in time. It left his brain asphyxiated.”
When Danyl woke up several weeks later, he could neither see nor speak. More than half his body was rendered immobile. With rehabilitation he regained speech and learnt to use his hands, but his vision was restored only to a small degree. “I would say just slivers of vision,” Kish recalls. “The lower portion of his body did not recover either.”
Confined to a wheelchair the Scottish lad attended school learning Braille and computers. He underwent physiotherapy too, but while his legs were being strengthened, he could not exercise them owing to his poor vision.
“It was a catch-22 situation that no one knew how to break,” says Kish, who is the first visually challenged person in the United States to become a certificated orientation and mobility specialist. “People around him presumed that it was alright since he was being wheeled around and all his needs were met. In the United Kingdom, electric wheelchairs are not dispensed to visually impaired people unlike in the US.”
When Kish began working with Danyl, he observed that he was highly motivated to stand and insisted on doing his lessons by standing, despite not having lower-body movement.
“I gave him a long cane, something no one had ever done before. Then I taught him to click his tongue, which is what we specialise in,” Kish says. He also gave him a long trekking pole in his other hand for support.
“I understood it would be hard for him to get back on his feet after being inactive for three years. I wasn’t expecting any miracle but we actually got one,” the 46-year-old says. “He was very enthusiastic and told me he would be able to walk around the room. I asked him to go slow. He got up and walked around clicking his tongue and holding the cane and the trekking pole in his hands. After a while he sat down to rest.”
Danyl next wanted to go out to the playground. For the next hour he walked around the playground clicking, cane and stick in hand.
“It was freezing,” recalls Kish. “We were hoping that he would get tired but he continued walking until he almost dropped from fatigue. I learnt later that he had a high threshold for pain.”
Today Danyl has given up his wheelchair for good and walks on his own.
“That was made possible because we would not say ‘no’ and because we had a commitment to his freedom, for him to be able to direct his own movements and his life,” Kish says.
Daniel Kish grew up in Los Angeles and attended a regular school. He has been using echolocation ever since he was a baby.
“I developed that on my own,” Kish says. “I picked it up because I was expected to. I was raised with freedom and not as a special child with restrictions. I grew up with other children and was doing the things they were doing. I walked to school every day. My parents gave me a lot of freedom. I was left alone and did not have people hovering over me all the time.”
His parents had three goals for him, however. “They wanted me to move out like everyone else does in the States. They wanted me to pay taxes which meant that I have a job. And, they wanted me to take care of them at old age,” he says, adding: “I never felt that I was born different, until I changed school from the sixth grade to seventh. I was 12 when I moved into a larger school. In my previous school, the children were accustomed to me.”
That was not the case in the new school. “There were a lot of children who had never seen a blind person,” he says. “I could tell that blindness was a critical thing by the way they talked. Some even kept a distance. That was the first time when I realised that society was seeing me differently. It was quite a trauma for me because I did not see myself differently.”
Kish fared well in studies and was voted the “Best Brain” in school. But what he enjoyed most were practical applications, such as carpentry, metal works, drafting and drawing. “I did electronics and I enjoyed building circuits,” he says.
At 18 Kish moved out of home to join university. He owes his love for the outdoors to his friend Jerry, whom he met here. “I was 18 then and Jerry was 30. He was visually challenged but that did not deter him from hitch-hiking,” he says.
Jerry often took off on treks and went camping on his own. He made a living as a handyman after convincing people that he could help them — sometimes as a farmhand, sometimes doing carpentry or plumbing work. “I thought it was crazy, but romantic too — a soldier-of-fortune kind of way to live,” says Kish, who accompanied Jerry on one such trip. “I enjoyed the experience. Looking back I realise that Jerry had planted a seed in me for outdoor travel. I don’t take unnecessary risks though, and do what my skills allow. I am also aware of my tolerance levels and will stretch them but not go far beyond what I can handle.”
Kish, who holds two masters degrees, one in Life Span Development Psychology and another in Special Education, worked with a couple of organisations, before starting World Access for the Blind in 2006. Digging into his bank savings he led the organisation from his house.
“Our approach has to do with freedom for our students and not paying lip service,” says Kish who has also written books and articles on the subject. “The methods of other organizations were restrictive. No one teaches echolocation, some even dismiss its application. In fact the countries that I have visited do not allow a visually challenged person to teach the blind.”
Kish and his team of three instructors work with children including infants, as young as 15-18 months while most organisations work with children aged 6 and above.
“Actually, infants are interesting and easy to work with than anyone else. You need to get over the fear factor. Infants function totally naturally. They absorb like sponges. You just have to tune into that and speak to them in infant’s language. They can’t understand yours,” Kish says.
“The trouble most people have with infants is that they have forgotten how to be natural,” Kish adds.
Kish advocates that the length of the cane used by blind children be as tall as the child, a conclusion he arrived at after working with preschoolers. “I noticed that they would reach for my cane and drop theirs. This happened frequently. My cane was way too long, though. That made me question as to why they grabbed it in both hands. I also noticed that they did not swing it like a toy or use it playfully. It served a bigger something in their systems.”
Over time, Kish concluded that a longer cane offered greater reach. “It is like extending your vision and that improves confidence, reaction time and ability to gauge what is around them,” Kish explains. “We have come to believe that the brain optimises its viewing environment approximately at our body length.”
In most cases, he says, the canes only reach the base of the sternum, which makes children lose interest, because the cane is not telling the brain to activate.
Disapproving of family members constantly attending to their visually impaired child, Kish says, “We see it all the time when students comes to us, immobilised by the control imposed on them from outside. People think they are helping them but are actually harming them. They are causing the degradation of neuron processes necessary for freedom of movement.”
He adds, “Most of them had got into this habit since they were very young. It causes the mechanism in the brain that supports freedom of movement to atrophy. The whole perspective of life and livelihood needs to support freedom if freedom is what we want and that means not have someone move you around as a puppet.”
Hiking and tree-climbing are recreational aspects of this method and provides the visually challenged with opportunities to reach beyond what they thought was possible and to kick-start the brain to activate systems of neurology that are latent or dormant.
So have there been accidents on his road trips? “Yes, they were pretty serious accidents,” Kish says.
One occurred while biking on the mountains with friends. “They got ahead of me and I zigged when I should have zagged, resulting in a fall from a cliff, a height of 10 feet [3 metres], and scraped my arms.”
On a hiking trip with his students, Kish jumped off a rock and landed awkwardly, breaking the left heel bone. “That was really bad. I had to hop back to the camp 2 miles [3 kilometres] away and it required emergency attention.”
The worst accident happened while camping solo. While lowering himself into his chair, it collapsed and Kish landed in a heap. “I was miles away and had to walk back with a broken finger.”
Yet, nothing diminishes the spirit of adventure and the love for nature in Kish. He credits his parents for who he is today.
“Children have a spark for discovery. Some of us have it more than the others. Blind children are not encouraged. They are restricted and the spark in them is snuffed out by people who take control of their lives. For me, the drive was not subverted. I was given all the freedom,” says Kish, who is also a trained vocalist and loves listening to ancient and medieval music.
Mythily Ramachandran is a writer based in Chennai, India.
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No limits
World Access for the Blind relies on donations. Daniel Kish, president, says, “We don’t charge an official fee but we ask for generous contributions for the services,” which include:
Mobility Training on navigating one’s surroundings using a long cane so that the visually challenged can function with freedom of choice.
Recreational Training includes activities such as mountain-biking, soccer or basketball, so that the visually impaired can fully participate in all aspects of life.
Community Participation encourages them to effectively participate in all activities.
Informational Counselling provides support for families to help them understand their child’s blindness and to help their child participate fully in life.
Professional Development provides training for schools and mobility specialists all over the world to incorporate Flash Sonar and No Limits into their programmes.
Communication Facilitation helps students and families obtain resources and services from the community.
For more information, visit www.worldaccessfortheblind.org
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Did you know?
Juan Ruiz, Mobility Coach at World Access for the Blind, set a Guinness World Record in 2011 for blind bicycling when he weaved his way through ten randomly placed obstacles in 43 seconds without touching any of them.
