Echolocation: How A Blind Man Sees With Sound [Video]

Daniel Kish has taken the expression “blind as a bat” to a whole new level.

After losing his sight completely when he was only 13-months-old, Kish refused to let blindness hinder him and eventually mastered the ability to use echolocation (like a bat) to construct a sonic model of his environment.

Therefore, though blind, Kish uses his ears to see. When he walks around unfamiliar places he clicks his tongue and then listens as that sound bounces off nearby objects.

Daniel says he’s trained his brain to turn these sounds into an image of sorts — an auditory map he follows with the help of a cane.

“When you send out a sonar call… you’re interrogating the environment,” he said. “You’re asking, ‘Where are you?’ and ‘What are you?’ And the environment answers back.”

Kish is the founder of a nonprofit organization called World Access for the Blind. His goal is to teach “human echolocation” — or seeing the world through sound — to blind people all over the world. And so far the organization has helped around 10,000 students in nearly 40 countries to see with their ears.

“It isn’t that difficult to teach. It really isn’t,” he said. “I believe that the brain is already at least partly wired to do this. All that needs to happen is the hardware needs to be awakened. It needs to be activated, and we believe we’ve found ways of doing this.”