Daniel Kish is an expert in human echo location which is the ability of humans to detect objects in their environment by sensing echoes from those objects, by actively creating sounds – for example, by tapping their canes, lightly stomping their foot, snapping their fingers, or making clicking noises with their mouths.
People trained to orient by echo location can interpret the sound waves reflected by nearby objects, accurately identifying their location and size.
50 year-old Daniel had his eyes removed at the age of 13 months due to retinal cancer and he learned to make palatal clicks with his tongue when he was still a child. He now trains other blind people in the use of echo location and in what he calls “Perceptual Mobility”.
Daniel and World Access for the Blind (WAFTB), the organisation which he founded in 2000 have taught a form of echo location to at least 500 blind children around the world.
The American is even able to cycle his bike, avoiding cars and negotiating corners, using echo location.
