Hayley: Welcome to Beyond Vision. I'm your host Haley and today I'm joined by Daniel Kish. Daniel is the founder of World Access for the Blind. He lost his sight as a baby because of eye cancer and is well known for teaching human echolocation. His approach called Flash Sonar uses tongue clicks and their echoes to help people understand their surroundings. In this episode you'll hear Daniel share his experiences in his own words. Let's get into our conversation. how would you describe your visual impairment and when did it begin?
Daniel: I am totally blind, zero, zero, zero. I have no light perception in both eyes. It began well I I would be considered congenitally blind, so basically blind from birth, or at least visually impaired from birth, but my the the per the the cause of visual impairment for me was retinal blastoma. So th those are basically tumors that eat away at your retina and they generally begin at birth or near birth or sometimes even prior to birth. My first eye was actually removed at the age of seven months of age and my second at 13 months of age. but both eyes would have been very significantly visually impaired before being removed.
Hayley: What are three words you would use to describe yourself and why?
Daniel: Well, quirky is the first one that comes to mind, so I will give you that one. Introverted. And I have to use a hyphenated word here, well meaning. So quirky, introverted, and well meaning. I honestly believe that I have the best intentions at heart. I I work very hard to be responsible and conscientious. I work very hard to not inconvenience others, and indeed I work very hard to help other people find their own freedom and their own strength, and I not that's not just in my professional life, but also my personal life. Those are those are conscious that I maintain. And so I think that's what I mean by well-meaning. that's not to say that I always succeed, but I I certainly make every conscious effort to try. quirky. Quirky. Well, I identify as autistic and There just aren't autistic people out there who aren't quirky. I probably rate somewhere in the middle of the spectrum in terms of quirkiness. At least that's what I would say. People who know me might say that I rate higher on the spectrum than I would say I rate myself. Quirky, just yeah. My brain is just very full of machinations in order to get in order to manage. So I I you know how in accessibility, right? People say an app is accessible or a program is accessible or voiceover, whatever.
Hayley: Yes.
Daniel: But you know how it's all about workarounds? It's
Hayley: Mm-hmm.
Daniel: all about workarounds. Nothing's really like truly accessible. I shouldn't say nothing, but mostly it's like you have to figure it out. You have to figure out how to work around it. You have to figure out how to strategize to make it accessible. And that's my brain. I've had to hack my own brain to figure out how to make it work in this world that we live in. And I think that that process of hacking my own brain and kind of working around who I am and what my natural challenges are displays itself. in a range of behaviors that some people would find quirky. so that's that. And then introversion, I'm just introverted. Like every personality test I've ever taken has me highly rated in the introversion spectrum. I I know for myself that I'm Well, to say that I'm happiest or at least most at ease when I'm not around people would not be an error. don't like being around people or can't be around people. I obviously can and I obviously do. In fact, some of my favorite activities involve people. but I do most certainly feel myself most at rest and most settled. when I have my own company.
Hayley: Yeah. So you you lost your sight very early in life. What was your childhood like and what do you remember about discovering the world around you?
Daniel: Some people ask me how long have I been echolocating? And I sometimes tell people that I've been echolocating for as long as I can remember. Well, I've been clicking for as long as I can remember. So my earliest memories are back when I was two and a half, when I broke out of my bedroom. I I left I managed to move a toy box over to the window and climb up and let myself out. And then I let myself out of our our back garden via a chain link fence, so I climbed over the fence. It's very easily easy for a toddler to climb over a chain link fence. the the rungs are just perfect for toddler hands and feet, and so it's very easy for me to make it up and over the fence. And I wandered through several yards down the block. Before someone found me prowling about their back garden and and called the police and had me returned home. Now, all of that ha this would have happened after midnight. So in the in the quiet wee hours of the morning. But what I just what I distinctly remember was being aware of things around me and being aware, being curious. So if I clicked and I click at something. And registered that it was there, the next the next obvious step was to go find out what it is. And, you know, and and and is it it seems like it's similar to other things that I know. So let's go find out. So there was it was driven by both registration of my surroundings and curiosity about them. And the curiosity sort of connecting me through registration. To those objects. And that's what really drew me from, you know, garden to garden to garden over these fences. So I I tell that story because it kind of characterizes my life. that little, you know, two and a half-year-old adventure in footy pajamas was. is is just kind of how I've always done things ever since. and it it's just that the, you know, there've been a lot more gardens since and covered a lot more area, a lot more territory. And, you know, my discovery strategies have probably become a lot more sophisticated. but essentially I've built upon that same process and those same drives.
Hayley: So you began clicking your tongue as a young child. How did you first discover that clicking could tell you about your surroundings?
Daniel: I don't remember exactly. it's certainly not something that I would have given conscious thought about. I know in part by parent report that I was probably clicking that they even noticed between say fifteen and and eighteen months of age. Possibly before then, 'cause again, my my first my second eye was taken at thirteen months and I think that the expectation. So my parents were very young. they were just, my mom was 18, my dad was maybe 20, early 20s, they just graduated high school, and they didn't have an education after high school. You know, what they had was a lot of street smarts. And There were no services back then, so 1966, right? So there were no services, there was no early childhood intervention. None of that was happening. and so I think my parents just it was really a more common sense, you know, the traditional idea that children learn by doing. they learn about life by living life. They learn about relationships by having relationships, They learn about their surroundings by interacting with their surroundings. I think my parents, well, they've said that they always wanted me to move out and pay taxes. and so they kind of made the connection between, well, if we wanted to move out, you know, then he needs to be able to take responsibility. He needs to be able to. enjoy the same freedoms and responsibilities that other people enjoy. There needs to be a sense of of being able to interact and fit in with his surroundings and pay taxes means, you know, you're you're getting a job, you're finding employment at some point. So you're gonna have to be able to do stuff. And I think they just figured that the pathway they knew For a child to grow up to be able to do those things was to make sure that they had a a childhood that was That held to as much convention as possible. So, you know, understanding what constitutes typical children growing up and typical children developing. So I was encouraged to participate in, you know, most of the activities that other kids participate in. I was encouraged to to participate with other kids. I went to I was Fully included. I went to mainstream school. It had a VI unit up until I was through sixth year, I guess. And then seventh year, it was what we would call itinerant services. So brought into the school. But it was typical school. And then from the fifth year on, I was actually in my neighborhood school. So I I actually walked to school from the age of 10 until I graduated. high school at 18 and and went on to university. So I you know, I'm just basically I'm just saying that that was that was where my parents were aiming in their view of me and in their conceptualization of me. And then I'll go on to say that what did full inclusion look like? Well in some ways it was really rough, and in some ways I I was really incredibly fortunate. The way it was rough was that this was all new. Back in the late 60s and early 70s, we didn't really have people with special needs, kids with special needs, off in regular schools. It it just it wasn't really done, it wasn't really heard of, and so we were all kind of inventing the wheel as we went. But on the upside, by you know the the number of kids that are thankfully going through the system now, but everyone's squabbling for resources.
Hayley: Thank you.
Daniel: Back then people were not really squabbling for resources, not quite not in quite the same way. And so I had a braille transcriber to myself pretty much. I had A lot of resources to myself going through school. And I also didn't have a full-time aid. In fact, I didn't have an aid or support worker or paraprofessional at all the whole time I went through school. Now, I'm not saying that's the way it should be, and I'm certainly not saying it's the way it should be for all children, although I do think that it's probably advisable for some children. To lay off the amount of adult support that we often impose upon children. but I didn't have it, for better or worse. I it just wasn't there. I didn't have an aid and I I managed through school without that, you know, para pro kind of following me around and making sure that I was whatever, behaving or accessing. curriculum properly or or all these things. And while that certainly posed its challenges, what it forced me to do is A look after myself and B access peer support where support was needed or advisable. So I Basically, if I wanted to do something and I didn't have an aid there to sort of magically make it happen, I needed to find ways of making that happen. So it was really more about reaching out to peers and things like that to form a kind of support network, if you will, which became which was extraordinarily non intuitive for an autistic introvert such as myself. So Having been put in a position of requiring that in turn required me to develop the social engagement strategies and ability to manage people around me so that I could well I mean later it transferred to skills of being able to work with with people in larger systems and Being able to manage people, I was running a nonprofit for a while, so being able to manage people there, being able to advocate for and with other people, being able to manage a complex travel itinerary, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
Hayley: for people who have never heard of it, how would you explain echolocation in simple words?
Daniel: I would say that most people have heard of echolocation, whether they're aware of it or not. Most people know something about dolphins, whales, bats, that bats can fly around in
Hayley: Yes.
Daniel: yeah, right, in near darkness or even total darkness, and they can find their way around and they can avoid running into things and they can hunt. And forage with little to no light. Not all bats, but the the bats who are echolocating are able to do this. And the way they do it is they throw sound out in the form of chirps or clicks, and those sounds bounce off of things around them and come back to them, and the bat it is able to use the patterns of. Of reflective sound, sound reflecting off of other objects, to build up a scene in their minds, to build up a layout of where things are and what things are around them in their minds in real time. It's dynamic. They can fly around, bats are very fast, and they can do this. And it just turns out that humans can do much the same thing, slower motion, probably, but. Basically the same kind of thing. by making a noise, it it can be a tongue click, but it can also be other noises that a person can produce. and those sounds go out and bounce off of things. And if we think about the concept of things bouncing off of other things. So things bounce off of things. If you throw a ball at something, it bounces off of that something and comes back to you. So There's this clear definition that something is there. Something is there because if there wasn't something there, the ball wouldn't come back to you. but you can also make other inferences about that something. So if you throw the ball to your left and it comes back to you, and you throw the ball to your right and it comes back to you, then you can deduce that the thing you're throwing the ball at has a span, it has a width, it has a size to it. If you throw the ball up, And it comes back to you, and now it has a height to it. and if you throw a ball and it, you know, it has a really nice sharp ping when it comes back, that means that it's just bounced off of a really hard surface and it's come back to you with some force. If you throw the ball at something and it has more of a wispy sound or a whooshy sound or a mushy sound and it comes back to you not quite Quite so solidly, that suggests to you that the service, the surface that the the ball is just bounced off of is not hard and solid like the the first one was. So that's very much what this is, but it's a lot more sophisticated than that. Because sound isn't like throwing just one ball at something. It's like throwing a bunch of little balls at something. And your brain is able to learn to determine characteristics about surfaces based on how those all these little balls come bouncing back to you with each sound that you've made.
Hayley: Yeah, so correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the research has been shown that visual cortex has been activated once you you use echolocation more often. So what do you actually perceive when you click?
Daniel: Well, that's interesting that you say that, because yes, it's true. once you've reached a certain level of proficiency with echolocation, the visual imp visual cortex becomes deployed to learn to process these signals. And the process is is quite similar to using like flash photography. So a flash photography, you're bouncing light light off of stuff in much the same way that an echolocator is bouncing sound off of stuff. So So the the human brain has a pretty massive area devoted to processing light information to extract spatial relationships, spatial layouts, and spatial characteristics from elements, objects, features, items throughout the environment. Well Proficient echolocator is employing a very similar process. You're bouncing energy off of your environment. In the case of a sighted person, it's light. In the case of a blind person, it's sound, but both things are energy and both things will bounce and reflect and come back to the observer. So what the visual cortex is doing is it's it's basically just processing all this returning information in All this returning acoustic information or sonic information in very much the same way that it would process this optical information, the information of light. Okay, now I said all of that, maybe explaining you know how the clock works rather than just telling you the time. But here comes the time. I said all of that because the internal experience of it. Is arguably not that dissimilar because the visual cortex is basically communicating with your brain using images, using representations. I'm calling them images. That's actually incorrect. the correct term would be representations, but I'm gonna use the term images because that's that's the feeling
Hayley: Okay.
Daniel: you get. You actually get images. I'm not saying they're visual images. I'm not saying that I see in my mind's eye the same way that a sighted person sees in their mind's eye. I'm not making that argument. I have nothing, I have no basis of comparison, so I can't make that argument. But what I can tell you is that the image I have in my head that is formed from echolocating and other things too. It's not just an auditory image, it's also touch. and concepts and things like this. All these things feed into that image. But let's let's extract the auditory piece for the sake of our discussion. those elements that f form the image are very similar to the visual image. So its spatial relationships, its size, its density, its height, width, Maybe not the exact shape, but it's the general contour or form factor, its distance, its position, and its layout. It's not just about one object, it's about multiple objects and their relationships to each other and their relationships to yourself. And that's those are the kinds of things that we get out of visual images. Obviously the visual images are much more detailed and they're much more defined. but the overall kind of phenomenology of it is is is pretty similar. And indeed, people who have be who were sighted and then who go blind and then learn to echolocate, once they reach a certain level of proficiency echolocating, they they kind of bear out this idea that yeah, this is getting processed through the visual cortex. And yeah, you know, these echo images bear A lot of similar bear a sense of similarity to the visual images that people used to have. people often confuse I'll give you one example where one of my students did lose all of his vision. They did tests, he wasn't seeing anything. He was zero light perception. Now that's pretty rare. Most people who are blind actually do have some residual light perception, or even some residual visual, visual perception. But this was one situation where he lost his vision due to optic atrophy and there was no vision left, and there was no light perception whatsoever. But as he was learning his blindness skills and he was getting around his school, he was sensing. And I hadn't started working with him yet, but he was sensing these large support columns that he would pass by. And he thought he was seeing them because they were registering as if they were visual. He thought he was getting these visual flashes of these objects. And that's not what was happening. I mean, that's what the medical record would show. what was happening is he was beginning to echolocate. And a lot of people who have had a visual past who've become proficient at echolocating will say similar things. They'll say that they experience it like flashes of light or dark curtains or, you know, visual reflections, and that they'll actually have images in their head which are quite visual in nature.
Hayley: Hmm. You founded World Access for the Blind in 2000. What made you start it?
Daniel: I am an orientation and mobility specialist. I'm a certified orientation and mobility specialist as of nineteen ninety six, I think, or seven. and I went through university training at the master's level to earn my certification in orientation and mobility. So I had done my master's thesis in echolocation. How do we teach it basically? How do we teach echolocation? And how do we apply it to mobility? And those are two different things. Not all echolocators necessarily apply it to their mobility. And, you know, not every good traveler is necessarily a proficient echolocator. Yes, there is a correlation. Between proficiency and echolocation and proficiency in travel, but it's not a you know one-to-one correspondence. So I was a proficient echolocator, though, and I did teach proficiency and echolocation. And that wasn't really happening in the field. As much as money orientation and mobility specialists would swear that they that they teach this, it really wasn't being taught. You couldn't find literature on it, you couldn't find training curriculum, there was no real documentation. And so I fabricated the documentation. I made it up. And then in the process of working with these students, these participants in my thesis, I developed a curriculum and what some of the things that my students were doing using echolocation started to draw attention. So we actually started getting approached by the media. By the press. I did not reach out to the press. I am not a self-promoter, not in that sense. It was word of mouth. And so people would approach me from the media and want to know more. They'd want to do a story, they'd want an illustration or a demonstration, and one thing led to another, and I started getting more and more requests. from more and more places and more and more people to learn this and to teach this. How do we learn this? How can we teach this? how can how can I learn it? How can I learn it and help my students learn it? All that sort of thing. And it was happening from it started happening from not just, locally, but but all over the world. And so I started actually making these videotapes. Now, mind you, this is before the internet. So you couldn't just Google me. And most of our contacts weren't even by email at that time. I was actually snail mailing out information to people. And it got to the point where it became clear that there was such an interest level in this, and a mounting interest level in this, that it was hard for me to maintain the job that I had at the time, which was at A nonprofit. It was at a small blindness nonprofit, mostly working with younger kids, which I thoroughly enjoyed doing. I was a department head there as well as an orientation and mobil mobility specialist there. And but you know, their interest wasn't really global. It was sort of immediate surroundings. and it was becoming harder and harder for me to maintain my work there and my position there and and also see to. all of these other interests. And so I eventually phased out the nonprofit I was working for and phased into the foundation of my own nonprofit at the time, which was World Access for the Blind.
Hayley: so your message is no limits. What does that mean to you in everyday life?
Daniel: it doesn't necessarily mean that there are not limits. I don't really like the term limits. A lot of people talk about, we need to be mindful of our limitations. The term limitation is used a lot in the disability space. for me doesn't stand for for incapacity. It stands for distinctive. So I think of it in terms of distinctive ability rather than disability. and I don't see people in terms of limitations, and I don't see myself in terms of limit limitations. So that's the first thing. it's more a matter of not what are we limited from achieving, but how How do we achieve? So there are many ways to feed a cat, and there are many ways to achieve. And the the quantity and quality of one's achievements in life need not depend on the breadth and scope of conventional ways of doing things. it all has to do with. How do we do things? How do we make things happen? How do we how do we reach an achievement? And you don't really reach an achievement by co by concentrating your attention on your limitations. That's just not how you get there. You you reach your achievement by concentrating your attention on your functioning, on how you operate, how you function, how you do what you need to do to achieve the thing you want to achieve. So that's the first thing about no limits. the second thing about no limits is the disavowing of other people imposing limits, of other people presuming limits. whatever barriers a person faces, whatever challenges a person faces need not be. Presumed or imposed by others. Those are for ourselves to decide. and so I don't think of of life in terms of limits. I think of life in terms of challenges. And that pretty much evens the playing field in my mind because we all have challenges. There isn't anyone on the planet who doesn't doesn't have challenges or who hasn't had challenges. So we all face challenges and we all have to learn to navigate and negotiate those challenges
Hayley: The visioners are people who first came to you as students and now teach others. What does it mean to you to see that happen?
Daniel: well. I think the best teachers are those who are open and able to learn from their students. The best teachers are the best learners. and I think that our students can be not only our best teachers, but also our our greatest inspiration. So I am both Highly edified and highly inspired by my students, many of whom have gone on to do you know bigger and better things than I have. And I take a lot of pride in that because the second thing I want to say about a teacher is the best is one who can support or inspire a student to reach beyond. what they themselves have been able to achieve as a teacher. So, a good teacher is one who can help leverage someone else to exceed their own capacities as a teacher. And
Hayley: Mm-hmm.
Daniel: that's that's not an ego thing. I mean, that's a I think it's a very practical thing. And for me, it imparts just a lot of Of pride and appreciation and gratitude for what I've been able to help other people achieve.
Hayley: What is one challenge, turning point or defining moment that helped shape who you are today?
Daniel: Hi, well let's see. been a long line of them actually. gonna go back to an earlier part of my career. there have been so many, so it's hard to to define that. but back in the early days it was probably around two thousand three I was doing work in Mexico and I had learned just enough Spanish to be able to manage in Mexico. and I was there for three I went every year for several weeks at a time for three years. And there was one young boy I got to know, him and his family. He was 10 when I first met him. And he went he was fully sighted until the age of six and then he was hit by a gas truck on his bicycle. And he was pretty much totaled. He was wrecked. He was in surgery for 48 hours while they put him back together. And he did make a full recovery, except for his vision. So his eyes were kind of, you know, his optic nerves were sort of yanked out of his head, and there was no recovering from that. So so he went totally blind. And he was really he kind of went from being the star of the community. there there are some kids who just have a brightness about them everyone's drawn to them and they're just special. And he went from that to being, the low kid on the the totem pole. And people now feeling sorry for him. And and, you know, he was apparently called names at school and things like that. So I mean, he really dropped in terms of social status. Anyway, so years pass, he was six, now he's ten, and I go with one of my visioneers, Juan Gruis, who who lives in Vienna and he teaches visioneering in Vienna and and all over German-speaking Europe, although he himself is Mexican. And he came with me to Mexico. Yeah,
Hayley: I see.
Daniel: he's he was only 19 at the time that he came with me to Mexico to help here. And so we ran these kids through our program, which was very, very intensive. It was learning how to echolocate, but was also learning how to apply your mobility skills. And we had a lot of games and activities and things. And one of them was football or soccer, as we in the States would call it. And for the record, that's what they call it in Mexico as well, a lot of the time. And they live and breathe it. Okay, it is just the thing that they do. But if
Hayley: Mm.
Daniel: you're blind, you you don't tend to do a whole lot of soccer in Mexico, even though there even though there is blind soccer, but they they're just not it
Hayley: Definitely. Mm-hmm.
Daniel: wasn't really a big thing. And this was a very poor community. So this was this would have been a a low SES community, a low socio and economic status community. and so you know, they weren't gonna go out and buy a professional grade blind football. So what we did is we put s the soccer ball into a plastic bag, a grocery bag. And there were plenty of those. And very magically and very cheaply, now the bag makes a racket as it moves around through the air and across the ground. And this boy, whose name was Daniel also, Daniel, was able to track the ball beautifully. In fact, He started, he was very aggressive and he started really being quite imposing in the game. And so so fast forward a little bit and three years later, he's playing with the neighborhood kids. and he's you know, they have the ball in the bag and he's they're just running around playing soccer. And at one point, It was beautiful to watch. that part was was beautiful to watch. And he's certainly he's playing circles around me, because I never got that great at the game. And then so at one point the bag eventually gets sufficiently torn up and it falls off the ball, and he he's been patching it together all this time, but it's just no longer patchable. So the bag gives up the ghost and he keeps playing. And I'm thinking, okay, well, that's interesting to watch. So I just step out of the game because I can't really track the ball very well anymore. But he's actually doing a fair to middle in job of tracking the ball. I'd say about 60 to 70% of his, maybe 75% of his original ability, but also struggling. And there was another boy who had ridden by on his bike. I had noticed that he'd ridden by, said a few things. He was watching us play for a while, but he said he couldn't really play because he has stuff to do at home. So he was standing outside the fence and just kind of watching. And then a few minutes later, he rides back up on his bicycle with a bag. So this boy, who was about Daniel's age, had ridden home of his own accord, collected a bag from home, rode back to where we were. And he passes the bag through the fence to Daniel. And then he gets off his bike and he comes in and actually starts playing. So he apparently got, you know, permission to come and play. But to me, the what impressed me was the casual non-ceremonial way it happened. It happened very smoothly, gracefully, easily, without a bunch of fanfare. it was the most natural thing to expect to happen. And I just thought, you know, if we could seed a world, that would be the seed. That would be the foundation upon which I would love to build a world. it was just about humanity And capability without any special fanfare attached to it. So I found it incredibly inspiring, but it also kind of put my whole ethos, my whole philosophy, which again was in early formation in those days, into a real perspective that what we're really reaching for in a after a fashion isn't anything special. What we're really reaching for is the Ability, capacity, I dare say permission, but not even permission. Just just we're reaching for the status in society to just be ordinary and have that be completely okay. So yeah, that I mean, to this day we're talking over twenty years ago, that moment maintains a significant impetus in my mind.
Hayley: Throughout your life, was there ever time when someone doubted your goals or abilities? And how did that affect you?
Daniel: Well, I yes and no. I've been fortunate in that I think in the early days it wasn't so much like we didn't really I didn't really experience that or I was fairly insulated from that for the most part. I mean, to an extent. I if I had been grazed by my grandma, we probably wouldn't be having this conversation, bless her. she had a very different philosophy as to how I should have been raised, but then, very much respected my mom's approach. and so I think growing up, certainly going through my childhood, anytime I encountered those kinds of impositions, those kinds of doubts, those kinds of the perspectives and attitudes that could erode someone, For the most part, just thought other people were were whacked. none of it made sense to me. And I I didn't give it much mind. Now, as a teenager, I struggled with it. Not because I was struggling to not incorporate it or, you know, it's not because I was not because I was coming to doubt myself. It had more to do with I guess a resentment around the disparity between how I saw myself and how I came to understand more and more people seeing me. I mean, as I got older, I became more, more conscious of society. And, you know, again, back in the early days, there was more stigma about blindness and about the cane and things like that. So I tended to take that personally.
Hayley: It would be honest.
Daniel: Now I remonstrated against it, so I wasn't going to embody it or and I wasn't going to incorporate it into myself. I actually became rather reactive to it and reactive against it and quite aggressive. until I realized that in order to be reactive to how I perceived other people perceiving me, I was actually giving control to that. I was giving away my own personal agency. I was giving away my agency as to how I, as to what I thought and how I felt. And I was. naturally kind of a control freak and and I was very much attached to control over myself. Like, you know, my my own personal agency was of utmost importance to me. And so when I realized that what I was actually doing was was giving away my own control over myself and over my situation to others, it pretty much stopped right away. It was like a a switch being flipped for me. And I became much more More casual, much more non-bothered, much more settled about, society's craziness and the disparity between how I saw myself as a blind person and how society saw me as a blind person. I can still become very protective of other people when I see that they're being really seriously disenfranchised by society, but I've learned to find a I guess a kind of calm place within that.
Hayley: Is there something about you, such as a hobby, talent or interest that people might not always expect?
Daniel: I'm a a trained vocalist. I'm a classic classically trained singer. So yeah, yeah. So so in the early days of university, I actually have two masters. One was connected to orientation and mobility, the other is connected to psychology. during my master's in psychology, I took an enormous number of music courses and did a lot of stage performance. So I sang in musical theater, choir, I did a lot of solo work. that was that was a a massive part of my life up until well, I'd say for the first half of it. you know, up until I turned about thirty, I did a lot of musical and singing performances.
Hayley: Moving on to advocacy work, what is one public misconception about blind or visually impaired people that you would most like to address or challenge?
Daniel: This idea, there's a lot of mixed messaging around independence and what independence actually means. And this idea that blindness is somehow associated with a lack of independence, andor this idea that you know, that a blind person expected to. somehow master independence. it's this weird sense of you have to be independent, but you can't really be independent. And you get both messages from both sides as a blind person. and I I don't think that's ever been reconciled. The orientation and mobilities profession doesn't really even have a professional or operational definition of independence. We haven't really defined it. So it's hard to teach it if you haven't really even defined it, right? So it's a mess. And so I don't tend to use the term independence. And I don't even think it's about independence. I think it's about personal free will, conscientious personal free will. It's about some people call it self determination, some people call it self actualization, some people call it self direction. some people call it autonomy or agency. I just call it free will because it preempts all of these sort of jargonistic meanings all of those specialized terms. And it's really more about how you achieve what you want to achieve. So, what is it that you want to achieve, and how do you want to go about achieving it? And In independence may or may not constitute some of those strategies that you go about it. Some of the most prolifically capable, self-determined, high achieving people in society, blind or sighted, were not necessarily the most independent, at least not by conventional definition. I mean, Helen Keller. Is a very good example of this. Helen Keller had a whole team of supporters helping her to do what she did throughout her life. just a network of people which she expertly drew to her and managed throughout her life. independence, you know, wouldn't be a term that you'd apply to her. So I guess in a nutshell I would say that this idea about how independent blind people are or aren't or should be or could be or might not be is immaterial. It doesn't matter. It should be taken off the table and completely replaced by By concepts and strategies that are more far reaching, that are more global, that are more diverse in terms of of how people can go about doing things and achieving
Hayley: Mm.
Daniel: things.
Hayley: Some people call you the real life Batman. How do you feel about that name?
Daniel: I've always loved Batman. I Batman was probably always my favorite superhero. I was really ambivalent about it to start with. And that moniker was first used back in the year 2000 by Ripley's Believe It Or Not. they actually called the episode Batman. and it's kind of stuck ever since. And I you know, I've remonstrated against it. For years or had remonstrated against it for years and years and years. And then I've actually sort of identified with it and and and taken it on board from a couple of perspectives. One is that, you know, within the DC comics, okay, so you've got different comic lines or franchises. Within the DC comics, Batman is the superhero who made himself, who developed himself out of his own humanity, his own personhood, to become the hero that he became. He wasn't, born on another planet or touched by an alien or, infused with Space Age technology. he wasn't constituted into superhero proportions by some sort of external force. He made himself into who he is. And in fact, it's actually kind of funny because if you watch the more modern DC comics and you've got Wonder Woman on there, you know, who's a goddess, right? You know, she's like a demigod or something, and then you have all these other folks, and there you have
Hayley: Please.
Daniel: At. Aquaman who's an Atlantean and and of course you have Superman. and they raz Bruce Wayne about having no superpowers. Like he's the one person in their group who has no superpowers. So what is your superpower? They'll ask. And he says, I'm rich. Well, he's rich enough and he is resourceful enough that he optimized himself he optimized his humanity into heroic proportions.
Hayley: Hmm.
Daniel: And I'm not rich, but I feel like that's the takeaway is that we can optimize ourselves. We can, bring ourselves up, make ourselves whatever, better, stronger, faster, smarter. we can actualize ourselves into something more than who we were. So that I really appreciate. And there there was another thing that I think is funny. In one of the animated Batman series, there's one point where Batman is with a colleague, a partner, and they're in a trap. They're trapped in some evildoer's lab. And this evildoers lab has this it's a ray that basically throws your mind off balance. It's like a light ray that makes it impossible for you to function. and people mostly just kind of was were falling over and they couldn't function because they couldn't see.
Hayley: Yeah.
Daniel: and so They have to get out of this lab because it's gonna blow up or something. And he says it's all booby traps, so you'll never make it out of here, whatever. So the guy leaves, and this this this woman says, What are we gonna do? We're helpless. And Batman's response was, I don't do helpless. And he closes his eyes and, you know, takes this woman by the hand or whatever, and they get out of there because he's listening and he's feeling and he's he's concentrating. So yeah, I can appreciate Batman for who the character is and what the character stands for.
Hayley: What advice would you give to blind and visually impaired young people who are facing uncertainty, exclusion, or a major challenge right now?
Daniel: I would say This gosh is no single piece of advice. because everyone's situation is so different, and I I don't like to presume to
Hayley: Mm-hmm.
Daniel: advise others. I will say that the two things that I have found have worked well for me and for lots of others. The first thing is don't let other people define you. And that may sound trite. we hear that a lot in, self-help literature or whatever. But I think it's something that I've taken to heart. to not let other people define me, to not let other people to to not be molded by the concepts and whims of other people. Humans project onto each other. We project onto others, others project onto us, and there's People have a funny way of conforming and molding to those perceptions, those projections. And I think as a blind person, you know, you're in kind of a unique situation of being relatively susceptible and vulnerable to that happening. But that doesn't mean that you have to be susceptible or vulnerable to being shaped or conformed, or or rather formed by those. projections by the subtle and not so subtle ways that other people individually and our community and society in general will impose their concepts and percepts onto us. So that's the first thing I found it very conducive to not be defined by that. That is much easier for some than for others, quite frankly. It's just, and it's even a kind of a personality variable, maybe. I found it relatively easy for the most part not to be defined by others. The other thing, though, which may feel a little counterintuitive to what I just said, is to recognize. The to recognize and cultivate mutually beneficial relationships. So, you know, to recognize when someone is really good for us, quite frankly. And it could be anyone. It could be a teacher, it could be a neighbor, it could be a friend. It often is a friend. we found in Children at risk literature, children who have been severely neglected or abused or, severely repressed or disenfranchised by their circumstances. And yet, if you study those children who are resilient or who are adaptable, well adjusted, if you will, one common defining factor in the lives of those of those children has been a really powerful relationship, a positive, impactful, positively impactful relationship. And it it needn't necessarily be a family member, although it could be, but it can often be someone outside the family. And to to recognize who those people are, those people who really see us for who we are and and and really have our best interest at heart and are not in fact trying to project or impose or mold but simply trying to maybe scaffold or support or provide foundations where we can have an opportunity to become our best selves. These relationships should be reciprocal. So it's all about giving back. Either giving back or paying it forward. I think both of those things are very important. but first you have to recognize when those relationships are at hand and to take them seriously and cultivate them and and be very grateful for them. Yeah, and be very grateful for them.
Hayley: What advice or suggestions or a message that you would always like to give to families and teachers who want to support a blind child?
Daniel: I think a very easy way to conceptualize the balance of support. Some people kind of ask, like, how much support is too much support? What kind of support should it be? You know, and we tend to trip over ourselves about whether or not we're offering too much or too little or not enough, or or or what kind of support is that is to think about the difference between doing with and doing for. blindness so often becomes about doing for people doing for you, people managing your life around you, managing your effects and your fair affairs around you, or managing you through an activity or an environment. In the guise of doing with, but really you're doing it for because the blind the blind person is often managed in a manner where they're pretty much disengaged or not fully engaged in the activity or server surroundings or environment in which they're being managed through, right? So doing with is about Wow. It's really about sharing in an activity, sharing in an experience that may involve facilitating a person a person's
Hayley: Okay,
Daniel: ability to to manage in that experience, such as, for example, having a guide runner. but it's more about
Hayley: I don't know
Daniel: about Maintaining an openness whereby both people or multiple people, including the blind person, are all fully engaged and fully connected with what's going on, and where a blind person has full agency over what's going on. Not agency over another person, but agency with another person, meaning that it's like any relationship. You come to an agreement over how things are to be managed. Where do we go? What are we doing? How are we doing it? And so often blind people are told how it's supposed to be done. You're told how to use your cane. You're told how to be guided. You're told by whom and where you're going to be guided. You're told what systems you're going to access and how you're going to access them. There's a whole lot of things that blind people are told to do and expected to do. And that personal agency I keep talking about becomes quite eroded or suspended so often. And so I think if we bear in mind what are the differences here between doing for and doing with, I think that helps to preserve a relational. interaction that doesn't become a power structure, that doesn't become a yeah, that doesn't become custodial in in in one way or another.
Hayley: Is there anything you would like to add that I have not asked about yet?
Daniel: You have been quite thorough. So I'm not sure that there is. Other than that, for me, all of this is about personal freedom. It's all about free will. I'm not here to tell people or even suggest to people how people should or shouldn't do things. I am not A proponent of a lot of the prescripted ways in which blind people are taught to do things or told to do things. There's a right way, there's a wrong way. I I'm not a fan of that. I'm much more a fan of people finding their own way, but people being supported to find their own way. People finding their own way with others, as we all must do. we all share the planet with eight billion people. So, there's no going it alone. And you can only go so far if others are doing for you. So for me it's a matter of people finding their freedom and claiming their freedom. and for me, it's often a matter of s staying out of the way of that process. So I think freedom is really the the key concept here.
Hayley: So where can our listeners learn more about your work and about World Access for the Blind?
Daniel: these days probably Googling is the easiest way. if you Google me, you'll find out more about me than I myself know. but yes, I mean you can certainly email Daniel dash Kish. that's the minus sign, not the underscore, Daniel dash Kish at one word, world access for the blind, world accessfortheblind.org.
Hayley: Well, thank you very much, Daniel, for joining me today.
Daniel: Thank you, it was a real pleasure.
Daniel: I am totally blind, zero, zero, zero. I have no light perception in both eyes. It began well I I would be considered congenitally blind, so basically blind from birth, or at least visually impaired from birth, but my the the per the the cause of visual impairment for me was retinal blastoma. So th those are basically tumors that eat away at your retina and they generally begin at birth or near birth or sometimes even prior to birth. My first eye was actually removed at the age of seven months of age and my second at 13 months of age. but both eyes would have been very significantly visually impaired before being removed.
Hayley: What are three words you would use to describe yourself and why?
Daniel: Well, quirky is the first one that comes to mind, so I will give you that one. Introverted. And I have to use a hyphenated word here, well meaning. So quirky, introverted, and well meaning. I honestly believe that I have the best intentions at heart. I I work very hard to be responsible and conscientious. I work very hard to not inconvenience others, and indeed I work very hard to help other people find their own freedom and their own strength, and I not that's not just in my professional life, but also my personal life. Those are those are conscious that I maintain. And so I think that's what I mean by well-meaning. that's not to say that I always succeed, but I I certainly make every conscious effort to try. quirky. Quirky. Well, I identify as autistic and There just aren't autistic people out there who aren't quirky. I probably rate somewhere in the middle of the spectrum in terms of quirkiness. At least that's what I would say. People who know me might say that I rate higher on the spectrum than I would say I rate myself. Quirky, just yeah. My brain is just very full of machinations in order to get in order to manage. So I I you know how in accessibility, right? People say an app is accessible or a program is accessible or voiceover, whatever.
Hayley: Yes.
Daniel: But you know how it's all about workarounds? It's
Hayley: Mm-hmm.
Daniel: all about workarounds. Nothing's really like truly accessible. I shouldn't say nothing, but mostly it's like you have to figure it out. You have to figure out how to work around it. You have to figure out how to strategize to make it accessible. And that's my brain. I've had to hack my own brain to figure out how to make it work in this world that we live in. And I think that that process of hacking my own brain and kind of working around who I am and what my natural challenges are displays itself. in a range of behaviors that some people would find quirky. so that's that. And then introversion, I'm just introverted. Like every personality test I've ever taken has me highly rated in the introversion spectrum. I I know for myself that I'm Well, to say that I'm happiest or at least most at ease when I'm not around people would not be an error. don't like being around people or can't be around people. I obviously can and I obviously do. In fact, some of my favorite activities involve people. but I do most certainly feel myself most at rest and most settled. when I have my own company.
Hayley: Yeah. So you you lost your sight very early in life. What was your childhood like and what do you remember about discovering the world around you?
Daniel: Some people ask me how long have I been echolocating? And I sometimes tell people that I've been echolocating for as long as I can remember. Well, I've been clicking for as long as I can remember. So my earliest memories are back when I was two and a half, when I broke out of my bedroom. I I left I managed to move a toy box over to the window and climb up and let myself out. And then I let myself out of our our back garden via a chain link fence, so I climbed over the fence. It's very easily easy for a toddler to climb over a chain link fence. the the rungs are just perfect for toddler hands and feet, and so it's very easy for me to make it up and over the fence. And I wandered through several yards down the block. Before someone found me prowling about their back garden and and called the police and had me returned home. Now, all of that ha this would have happened after midnight. So in the in the quiet wee hours of the morning. But what I just what I distinctly remember was being aware of things around me and being aware, being curious. So if I clicked and I click at something. And registered that it was there, the next the next obvious step was to go find out what it is. And, you know, and and and is it it seems like it's similar to other things that I know. So let's go find out. So there was it was driven by both registration of my surroundings and curiosity about them. And the curiosity sort of connecting me through registration. To those objects. And that's what really drew me from, you know, garden to garden to garden over these fences. So I I tell that story because it kind of characterizes my life. that little, you know, two and a half-year-old adventure in footy pajamas was. is is just kind of how I've always done things ever since. and it it's just that the, you know, there've been a lot more gardens since and covered a lot more area, a lot more territory. And, you know, my discovery strategies have probably become a lot more sophisticated. but essentially I've built upon that same process and those same drives.
Hayley: So you began clicking your tongue as a young child. How did you first discover that clicking could tell you about your surroundings?
Daniel: I don't remember exactly. it's certainly not something that I would have given conscious thought about. I know in part by parent report that I was probably clicking that they even noticed between say fifteen and and eighteen months of age. Possibly before then, 'cause again, my my first my second eye was taken at thirteen months and I think that the expectation. So my parents were very young. they were just, my mom was 18, my dad was maybe 20, early 20s, they just graduated high school, and they didn't have an education after high school. You know, what they had was a lot of street smarts. And There were no services back then, so 1966, right? So there were no services, there was no early childhood intervention. None of that was happening. and so I think my parents just it was really a more common sense, you know, the traditional idea that children learn by doing. they learn about life by living life. They learn about relationships by having relationships, They learn about their surroundings by interacting with their surroundings. I think my parents, well, they've said that they always wanted me to move out and pay taxes. and so they kind of made the connection between, well, if we wanted to move out, you know, then he needs to be able to take responsibility. He needs to be able to. enjoy the same freedoms and responsibilities that other people enjoy. There needs to be a sense of of being able to interact and fit in with his surroundings and pay taxes means, you know, you're you're getting a job, you're finding employment at some point. So you're gonna have to be able to do stuff. And I think they just figured that the pathway they knew For a child to grow up to be able to do those things was to make sure that they had a a childhood that was That held to as much convention as possible. So, you know, understanding what constitutes typical children growing up and typical children developing. So I was encouraged to participate in, you know, most of the activities that other kids participate in. I was encouraged to to participate with other kids. I went to I was Fully included. I went to mainstream school. It had a VI unit up until I was through sixth year, I guess. And then seventh year, it was what we would call itinerant services. So brought into the school. But it was typical school. And then from the fifth year on, I was actually in my neighborhood school. So I I actually walked to school from the age of 10 until I graduated. high school at 18 and and went on to university. So I you know, I'm just basically I'm just saying that that was that was where my parents were aiming in their view of me and in their conceptualization of me. And then I'll go on to say that what did full inclusion look like? Well in some ways it was really rough, and in some ways I I was really incredibly fortunate. The way it was rough was that this was all new. Back in the late 60s and early 70s, we didn't really have people with special needs, kids with special needs, off in regular schools. It it just it wasn't really done, it wasn't really heard of, and so we were all kind of inventing the wheel as we went. But on the upside, by you know the the number of kids that are thankfully going through the system now, but everyone's squabbling for resources.
Hayley: Thank you.
Daniel: Back then people were not really squabbling for resources, not quite not in quite the same way. And so I had a braille transcriber to myself pretty much. I had A lot of resources to myself going through school. And I also didn't have a full-time aid. In fact, I didn't have an aid or support worker or paraprofessional at all the whole time I went through school. Now, I'm not saying that's the way it should be, and I'm certainly not saying it's the way it should be for all children, although I do think that it's probably advisable for some children. To lay off the amount of adult support that we often impose upon children. but I didn't have it, for better or worse. I it just wasn't there. I didn't have an aid and I I managed through school without that, you know, para pro kind of following me around and making sure that I was whatever, behaving or accessing. curriculum properly or or all these things. And while that certainly posed its challenges, what it forced me to do is A look after myself and B access peer support where support was needed or advisable. So I Basically, if I wanted to do something and I didn't have an aid there to sort of magically make it happen, I needed to find ways of making that happen. So it was really more about reaching out to peers and things like that to form a kind of support network, if you will, which became which was extraordinarily non intuitive for an autistic introvert such as myself. So Having been put in a position of requiring that in turn required me to develop the social engagement strategies and ability to manage people around me so that I could well I mean later it transferred to skills of being able to work with with people in larger systems and Being able to manage people, I was running a nonprofit for a while, so being able to manage people there, being able to advocate for and with other people, being able to manage a complex travel itinerary, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
Hayley: for people who have never heard of it, how would you explain echolocation in simple words?
Daniel: I would say that most people have heard of echolocation, whether they're aware of it or not. Most people know something about dolphins, whales, bats, that bats can fly around in
Hayley: Yes.
Daniel: yeah, right, in near darkness or even total darkness, and they can find their way around and they can avoid running into things and they can hunt. And forage with little to no light. Not all bats, but the the bats who are echolocating are able to do this. And the way they do it is they throw sound out in the form of chirps or clicks, and those sounds bounce off of things around them and come back to them, and the bat it is able to use the patterns of. Of reflective sound, sound reflecting off of other objects, to build up a scene in their minds, to build up a layout of where things are and what things are around them in their minds in real time. It's dynamic. They can fly around, bats are very fast, and they can do this. And it just turns out that humans can do much the same thing, slower motion, probably, but. Basically the same kind of thing. by making a noise, it it can be a tongue click, but it can also be other noises that a person can produce. and those sounds go out and bounce off of things. And if we think about the concept of things bouncing off of other things. So things bounce off of things. If you throw a ball at something, it bounces off of that something and comes back to you. So There's this clear definition that something is there. Something is there because if there wasn't something there, the ball wouldn't come back to you. but you can also make other inferences about that something. So if you throw the ball to your left and it comes back to you, and you throw the ball to your right and it comes back to you, then you can deduce that the thing you're throwing the ball at has a span, it has a width, it has a size to it. If you throw the ball up, And it comes back to you, and now it has a height to it. and if you throw a ball and it, you know, it has a really nice sharp ping when it comes back, that means that it's just bounced off of a really hard surface and it's come back to you with some force. If you throw the ball at something and it has more of a wispy sound or a whooshy sound or a mushy sound and it comes back to you not quite Quite so solidly, that suggests to you that the service, the surface that the the ball is just bounced off of is not hard and solid like the the first one was. So that's very much what this is, but it's a lot more sophisticated than that. Because sound isn't like throwing just one ball at something. It's like throwing a bunch of little balls at something. And your brain is able to learn to determine characteristics about surfaces based on how those all these little balls come bouncing back to you with each sound that you've made.
Hayley: Yeah, so correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the research has been shown that visual cortex has been activated once you you use echolocation more often. So what do you actually perceive when you click?
Daniel: Well, that's interesting that you say that, because yes, it's true. once you've reached a certain level of proficiency with echolocation, the visual imp visual cortex becomes deployed to learn to process these signals. And the process is is quite similar to using like flash photography. So a flash photography, you're bouncing light light off of stuff in much the same way that an echolocator is bouncing sound off of stuff. So So the the human brain has a pretty massive area devoted to processing light information to extract spatial relationships, spatial layouts, and spatial characteristics from elements, objects, features, items throughout the environment. Well Proficient echolocator is employing a very similar process. You're bouncing energy off of your environment. In the case of a sighted person, it's light. In the case of a blind person, it's sound, but both things are energy and both things will bounce and reflect and come back to the observer. So what the visual cortex is doing is it's it's basically just processing all this returning information in All this returning acoustic information or sonic information in very much the same way that it would process this optical information, the information of light. Okay, now I said all of that, maybe explaining you know how the clock works rather than just telling you the time. But here comes the time. I said all of that because the internal experience of it. Is arguably not that dissimilar because the visual cortex is basically communicating with your brain using images, using representations. I'm calling them images. That's actually incorrect. the correct term would be representations, but I'm gonna use the term images because that's that's the feeling
Hayley: Okay.
Daniel: you get. You actually get images. I'm not saying they're visual images. I'm not saying that I see in my mind's eye the same way that a sighted person sees in their mind's eye. I'm not making that argument. I have nothing, I have no basis of comparison, so I can't make that argument. But what I can tell you is that the image I have in my head that is formed from echolocating and other things too. It's not just an auditory image, it's also touch. and concepts and things like this. All these things feed into that image. But let's let's extract the auditory piece for the sake of our discussion. those elements that f form the image are very similar to the visual image. So its spatial relationships, its size, its density, its height, width, Maybe not the exact shape, but it's the general contour or form factor, its distance, its position, and its layout. It's not just about one object, it's about multiple objects and their relationships to each other and their relationships to yourself. And that's those are the kinds of things that we get out of visual images. Obviously the visual images are much more detailed and they're much more defined. but the overall kind of phenomenology of it is is is pretty similar. And indeed, people who have be who were sighted and then who go blind and then learn to echolocate, once they reach a certain level of proficiency echolocating, they they kind of bear out this idea that yeah, this is getting processed through the visual cortex. And yeah, you know, these echo images bear A lot of similar bear a sense of similarity to the visual images that people used to have. people often confuse I'll give you one example where one of my students did lose all of his vision. They did tests, he wasn't seeing anything. He was zero light perception. Now that's pretty rare. Most people who are blind actually do have some residual light perception, or even some residual visual, visual perception. But this was one situation where he lost his vision due to optic atrophy and there was no vision left, and there was no light perception whatsoever. But as he was learning his blindness skills and he was getting around his school, he was sensing. And I hadn't started working with him yet, but he was sensing these large support columns that he would pass by. And he thought he was seeing them because they were registering as if they were visual. He thought he was getting these visual flashes of these objects. And that's not what was happening. I mean, that's what the medical record would show. what was happening is he was beginning to echolocate. And a lot of people who have had a visual past who've become proficient at echolocating will say similar things. They'll say that they experience it like flashes of light or dark curtains or, you know, visual reflections, and that they'll actually have images in their head which are quite visual in nature.
Hayley: Hmm. You founded World Access for the Blind in 2000. What made you start it?
Daniel: I am an orientation and mobility specialist. I'm a certified orientation and mobility specialist as of nineteen ninety six, I think, or seven. and I went through university training at the master's level to earn my certification in orientation and mobility. So I had done my master's thesis in echolocation. How do we teach it basically? How do we teach echolocation? And how do we apply it to mobility? And those are two different things. Not all echolocators necessarily apply it to their mobility. And, you know, not every good traveler is necessarily a proficient echolocator. Yes, there is a correlation. Between proficiency and echolocation and proficiency in travel, but it's not a you know one-to-one correspondence. So I was a proficient echolocator, though, and I did teach proficiency and echolocation. And that wasn't really happening in the field. As much as money orientation and mobility specialists would swear that they that they teach this, it really wasn't being taught. You couldn't find literature on it, you couldn't find training curriculum, there was no real documentation. And so I fabricated the documentation. I made it up. And then in the process of working with these students, these participants in my thesis, I developed a curriculum and what some of the things that my students were doing using echolocation started to draw attention. So we actually started getting approached by the media. By the press. I did not reach out to the press. I am not a self-promoter, not in that sense. It was word of mouth. And so people would approach me from the media and want to know more. They'd want to do a story, they'd want an illustration or a demonstration, and one thing led to another, and I started getting more and more requests. from more and more places and more and more people to learn this and to teach this. How do we learn this? How can we teach this? how can how can I learn it? How can I learn it and help my students learn it? All that sort of thing. And it was happening from it started happening from not just, locally, but but all over the world. And so I started actually making these videotapes. Now, mind you, this is before the internet. So you couldn't just Google me. And most of our contacts weren't even by email at that time. I was actually snail mailing out information to people. And it got to the point where it became clear that there was such an interest level in this, and a mounting interest level in this, that it was hard for me to maintain the job that I had at the time, which was at A nonprofit. It was at a small blindness nonprofit, mostly working with younger kids, which I thoroughly enjoyed doing. I was a department head there as well as an orientation and mobil mobility specialist there. And but you know, their interest wasn't really global. It was sort of immediate surroundings. and it was becoming harder and harder for me to maintain my work there and my position there and and also see to. all of these other interests. And so I eventually phased out the nonprofit I was working for and phased into the foundation of my own nonprofit at the time, which was World Access for the Blind.
Hayley: so your message is no limits. What does that mean to you in everyday life?
Daniel: it doesn't necessarily mean that there are not limits. I don't really like the term limits. A lot of people talk about, we need to be mindful of our limitations. The term limitation is used a lot in the disability space. for me doesn't stand for for incapacity. It stands for distinctive. So I think of it in terms of distinctive ability rather than disability. and I don't see people in terms of limitations, and I don't see myself in terms of limit limitations. So that's the first thing. it's more a matter of not what are we limited from achieving, but how How do we achieve? So there are many ways to feed a cat, and there are many ways to achieve. And the the quantity and quality of one's achievements in life need not depend on the breadth and scope of conventional ways of doing things. it all has to do with. How do we do things? How do we make things happen? How do we how do we reach an achievement? And you don't really reach an achievement by co by concentrating your attention on your limitations. That's just not how you get there. You you reach your achievement by concentrating your attention on your functioning, on how you operate, how you function, how you do what you need to do to achieve the thing you want to achieve. So that's the first thing about no limits. the second thing about no limits is the disavowing of other people imposing limits, of other people presuming limits. whatever barriers a person faces, whatever challenges a person faces need not be. Presumed or imposed by others. Those are for ourselves to decide. and so I don't think of of life in terms of limits. I think of life in terms of challenges. And that pretty much evens the playing field in my mind because we all have challenges. There isn't anyone on the planet who doesn't doesn't have challenges or who hasn't had challenges. So we all face challenges and we all have to learn to navigate and negotiate those challenges
Hayley: The visioners are people who first came to you as students and now teach others. What does it mean to you to see that happen?
Daniel: well. I think the best teachers are those who are open and able to learn from their students. The best teachers are the best learners. and I think that our students can be not only our best teachers, but also our our greatest inspiration. So I am both Highly edified and highly inspired by my students, many of whom have gone on to do you know bigger and better things than I have. And I take a lot of pride in that because the second thing I want to say about a teacher is the best is one who can support or inspire a student to reach beyond. what they themselves have been able to achieve as a teacher. So, a good teacher is one who can help leverage someone else to exceed their own capacities as a teacher. And
Hayley: Mm-hmm.
Daniel: that's that's not an ego thing. I mean, that's a I think it's a very practical thing. And for me, it imparts just a lot of Of pride and appreciation and gratitude for what I've been able to help other people achieve.
Hayley: What is one challenge, turning point or defining moment that helped shape who you are today?
Daniel: Hi, well let's see. been a long line of them actually. gonna go back to an earlier part of my career. there have been so many, so it's hard to to define that. but back in the early days it was probably around two thousand three I was doing work in Mexico and I had learned just enough Spanish to be able to manage in Mexico. and I was there for three I went every year for several weeks at a time for three years. And there was one young boy I got to know, him and his family. He was 10 when I first met him. And he went he was fully sighted until the age of six and then he was hit by a gas truck on his bicycle. And he was pretty much totaled. He was wrecked. He was in surgery for 48 hours while they put him back together. And he did make a full recovery, except for his vision. So his eyes were kind of, you know, his optic nerves were sort of yanked out of his head, and there was no recovering from that. So so he went totally blind. And he was really he kind of went from being the star of the community. there there are some kids who just have a brightness about them everyone's drawn to them and they're just special. And he went from that to being, the low kid on the the totem pole. And people now feeling sorry for him. And and, you know, he was apparently called names at school and things like that. So I mean, he really dropped in terms of social status. Anyway, so years pass, he was six, now he's ten, and I go with one of my visioneers, Juan Gruis, who who lives in Vienna and he teaches visioneering in Vienna and and all over German-speaking Europe, although he himself is Mexican. And he came with me to Mexico. Yeah,
Hayley: I see.
Daniel: he's he was only 19 at the time that he came with me to Mexico to help here. And so we ran these kids through our program, which was very, very intensive. It was learning how to echolocate, but was also learning how to apply your mobility skills. And we had a lot of games and activities and things. And one of them was football or soccer, as we in the States would call it. And for the record, that's what they call it in Mexico as well, a lot of the time. And they live and breathe it. Okay, it is just the thing that they do. But if
Hayley: Mm.
Daniel: you're blind, you you don't tend to do a whole lot of soccer in Mexico, even though there even though there is blind soccer, but they they're just not it
Hayley: Definitely. Mm-hmm.
Daniel: wasn't really a big thing. And this was a very poor community. So this was this would have been a a low SES community, a low socio and economic status community. and so you know, they weren't gonna go out and buy a professional grade blind football. So what we did is we put s the soccer ball into a plastic bag, a grocery bag. And there were plenty of those. And very magically and very cheaply, now the bag makes a racket as it moves around through the air and across the ground. And this boy, whose name was Daniel also, Daniel, was able to track the ball beautifully. In fact, He started, he was very aggressive and he started really being quite imposing in the game. And so so fast forward a little bit and three years later, he's playing with the neighborhood kids. and he's you know, they have the ball in the bag and he's they're just running around playing soccer. And at one point, It was beautiful to watch. that part was was beautiful to watch. And he's certainly he's playing circles around me, because I never got that great at the game. And then so at one point the bag eventually gets sufficiently torn up and it falls off the ball, and he he's been patching it together all this time, but it's just no longer patchable. So the bag gives up the ghost and he keeps playing. And I'm thinking, okay, well, that's interesting to watch. So I just step out of the game because I can't really track the ball very well anymore. But he's actually doing a fair to middle in job of tracking the ball. I'd say about 60 to 70% of his, maybe 75% of his original ability, but also struggling. And there was another boy who had ridden by on his bike. I had noticed that he'd ridden by, said a few things. He was watching us play for a while, but he said he couldn't really play because he has stuff to do at home. So he was standing outside the fence and just kind of watching. And then a few minutes later, he rides back up on his bicycle with a bag. So this boy, who was about Daniel's age, had ridden home of his own accord, collected a bag from home, rode back to where we were. And he passes the bag through the fence to Daniel. And then he gets off his bike and he comes in and actually starts playing. So he apparently got, you know, permission to come and play. But to me, the what impressed me was the casual non-ceremonial way it happened. It happened very smoothly, gracefully, easily, without a bunch of fanfare. it was the most natural thing to expect to happen. And I just thought, you know, if we could seed a world, that would be the seed. That would be the foundation upon which I would love to build a world. it was just about humanity And capability without any special fanfare attached to it. So I found it incredibly inspiring, but it also kind of put my whole ethos, my whole philosophy, which again was in early formation in those days, into a real perspective that what we're really reaching for in a after a fashion isn't anything special. What we're really reaching for is the Ability, capacity, I dare say permission, but not even permission. Just just we're reaching for the status in society to just be ordinary and have that be completely okay. So yeah, that I mean, to this day we're talking over twenty years ago, that moment maintains a significant impetus in my mind.
Hayley: Throughout your life, was there ever time when someone doubted your goals or abilities? And how did that affect you?
Daniel: Well, I yes and no. I've been fortunate in that I think in the early days it wasn't so much like we didn't really I didn't really experience that or I was fairly insulated from that for the most part. I mean, to an extent. I if I had been grazed by my grandma, we probably wouldn't be having this conversation, bless her. she had a very different philosophy as to how I should have been raised, but then, very much respected my mom's approach. and so I think growing up, certainly going through my childhood, anytime I encountered those kinds of impositions, those kinds of doubts, those kinds of the perspectives and attitudes that could erode someone, For the most part, just thought other people were were whacked. none of it made sense to me. And I I didn't give it much mind. Now, as a teenager, I struggled with it. Not because I was struggling to not incorporate it or, you know, it's not because I was not because I was coming to doubt myself. It had more to do with I guess a resentment around the disparity between how I saw myself and how I came to understand more and more people seeing me. I mean, as I got older, I became more, more conscious of society. And, you know, again, back in the early days, there was more stigma about blindness and about the cane and things like that. So I tended to take that personally.
Hayley: It would be honest.
Daniel: Now I remonstrated against it, so I wasn't going to embody it or and I wasn't going to incorporate it into myself. I actually became rather reactive to it and reactive against it and quite aggressive. until I realized that in order to be reactive to how I perceived other people perceiving me, I was actually giving control to that. I was giving away my own personal agency. I was giving away my agency as to how I, as to what I thought and how I felt. And I was. naturally kind of a control freak and and I was very much attached to control over myself. Like, you know, my my own personal agency was of utmost importance to me. And so when I realized that what I was actually doing was was giving away my own control over myself and over my situation to others, it pretty much stopped right away. It was like a a switch being flipped for me. And I became much more More casual, much more non-bothered, much more settled about, society's craziness and the disparity between how I saw myself as a blind person and how society saw me as a blind person. I can still become very protective of other people when I see that they're being really seriously disenfranchised by society, but I've learned to find a I guess a kind of calm place within that.
Hayley: Is there something about you, such as a hobby, talent or interest that people might not always expect?
Daniel: I'm a a trained vocalist. I'm a classic classically trained singer. So yeah, yeah. So so in the early days of university, I actually have two masters. One was connected to orientation and mobility, the other is connected to psychology. during my master's in psychology, I took an enormous number of music courses and did a lot of stage performance. So I sang in musical theater, choir, I did a lot of solo work. that was that was a a massive part of my life up until well, I'd say for the first half of it. you know, up until I turned about thirty, I did a lot of musical and singing performances.
Hayley: Moving on to advocacy work, what is one public misconception about blind or visually impaired people that you would most like to address or challenge?
Daniel: This idea, there's a lot of mixed messaging around independence and what independence actually means. And this idea that blindness is somehow associated with a lack of independence, andor this idea that you know, that a blind person expected to. somehow master independence. it's this weird sense of you have to be independent, but you can't really be independent. And you get both messages from both sides as a blind person. and I I don't think that's ever been reconciled. The orientation and mobilities profession doesn't really even have a professional or operational definition of independence. We haven't really defined it. So it's hard to teach it if you haven't really even defined it, right? So it's a mess. And so I don't tend to use the term independence. And I don't even think it's about independence. I think it's about personal free will, conscientious personal free will. It's about some people call it self determination, some people call it self actualization, some people call it self direction. some people call it autonomy or agency. I just call it free will because it preempts all of these sort of jargonistic meanings all of those specialized terms. And it's really more about how you achieve what you want to achieve. So, what is it that you want to achieve, and how do you want to go about achieving it? And In independence may or may not constitute some of those strategies that you go about it. Some of the most prolifically capable, self-determined, high achieving people in society, blind or sighted, were not necessarily the most independent, at least not by conventional definition. I mean, Helen Keller. Is a very good example of this. Helen Keller had a whole team of supporters helping her to do what she did throughout her life. just a network of people which she expertly drew to her and managed throughout her life. independence, you know, wouldn't be a term that you'd apply to her. So I guess in a nutshell I would say that this idea about how independent blind people are or aren't or should be or could be or might not be is immaterial. It doesn't matter. It should be taken off the table and completely replaced by By concepts and strategies that are more far reaching, that are more global, that are more diverse in terms of of how people can go about doing things and achieving
Hayley: Mm.
Daniel: things.
Hayley: Some people call you the real life Batman. How do you feel about that name?
Daniel: I've always loved Batman. I Batman was probably always my favorite superhero. I was really ambivalent about it to start with. And that moniker was first used back in the year 2000 by Ripley's Believe It Or Not. they actually called the episode Batman. and it's kind of stuck ever since. And I you know, I've remonstrated against it. For years or had remonstrated against it for years and years and years. And then I've actually sort of identified with it and and and taken it on board from a couple of perspectives. One is that, you know, within the DC comics, okay, so you've got different comic lines or franchises. Within the DC comics, Batman is the superhero who made himself, who developed himself out of his own humanity, his own personhood, to become the hero that he became. He wasn't, born on another planet or touched by an alien or, infused with Space Age technology. he wasn't constituted into superhero proportions by some sort of external force. He made himself into who he is. And in fact, it's actually kind of funny because if you watch the more modern DC comics and you've got Wonder Woman on there, you know, who's a goddess, right? You know, she's like a demigod or something, and then you have all these other folks, and there you have
Hayley: Please.
Daniel: At. Aquaman who's an Atlantean and and of course you have Superman. and they raz Bruce Wayne about having no superpowers. Like he's the one person in their group who has no superpowers. So what is your superpower? They'll ask. And he says, I'm rich. Well, he's rich enough and he is resourceful enough that he optimized himself he optimized his humanity into heroic proportions.
Hayley: Hmm.
Daniel: And I'm not rich, but I feel like that's the takeaway is that we can optimize ourselves. We can, bring ourselves up, make ourselves whatever, better, stronger, faster, smarter. we can actualize ourselves into something more than who we were. So that I really appreciate. And there there was another thing that I think is funny. In one of the animated Batman series, there's one point where Batman is with a colleague, a partner, and they're in a trap. They're trapped in some evildoer's lab. And this evildoers lab has this it's a ray that basically throws your mind off balance. It's like a light ray that makes it impossible for you to function. and people mostly just kind of was were falling over and they couldn't function because they couldn't see.
Hayley: Yeah.
Daniel: and so They have to get out of this lab because it's gonna blow up or something. And he says it's all booby traps, so you'll never make it out of here, whatever. So the guy leaves, and this this this woman says, What are we gonna do? We're helpless. And Batman's response was, I don't do helpless. And he closes his eyes and, you know, takes this woman by the hand or whatever, and they get out of there because he's listening and he's feeling and he's he's concentrating. So yeah, I can appreciate Batman for who the character is and what the character stands for.
Hayley: What advice would you give to blind and visually impaired young people who are facing uncertainty, exclusion, or a major challenge right now?
Daniel: I would say This gosh is no single piece of advice. because everyone's situation is so different, and I I don't like to presume to
Hayley: Mm-hmm.
Daniel: advise others. I will say that the two things that I have found have worked well for me and for lots of others. The first thing is don't let other people define you. And that may sound trite. we hear that a lot in, self-help literature or whatever. But I think it's something that I've taken to heart. to not let other people define me, to not let other people to to not be molded by the concepts and whims of other people. Humans project onto each other. We project onto others, others project onto us, and there's People have a funny way of conforming and molding to those perceptions, those projections. And I think as a blind person, you know, you're in kind of a unique situation of being relatively susceptible and vulnerable to that happening. But that doesn't mean that you have to be susceptible or vulnerable to being shaped or conformed, or or rather formed by those. projections by the subtle and not so subtle ways that other people individually and our community and society in general will impose their concepts and percepts onto us. So that's the first thing I found it very conducive to not be defined by that. That is much easier for some than for others, quite frankly. It's just, and it's even a kind of a personality variable, maybe. I found it relatively easy for the most part not to be defined by others. The other thing, though, which may feel a little counterintuitive to what I just said, is to recognize. The to recognize and cultivate mutually beneficial relationships. So, you know, to recognize when someone is really good for us, quite frankly. And it could be anyone. It could be a teacher, it could be a neighbor, it could be a friend. It often is a friend. we found in Children at risk literature, children who have been severely neglected or abused or, severely repressed or disenfranchised by their circumstances. And yet, if you study those children who are resilient or who are adaptable, well adjusted, if you will, one common defining factor in the lives of those of those children has been a really powerful relationship, a positive, impactful, positively impactful relationship. And it it needn't necessarily be a family member, although it could be, but it can often be someone outside the family. And to to recognize who those people are, those people who really see us for who we are and and and really have our best interest at heart and are not in fact trying to project or impose or mold but simply trying to maybe scaffold or support or provide foundations where we can have an opportunity to become our best selves. These relationships should be reciprocal. So it's all about giving back. Either giving back or paying it forward. I think both of those things are very important. but first you have to recognize when those relationships are at hand and to take them seriously and cultivate them and and be very grateful for them. Yeah, and be very grateful for them.
Hayley: What advice or suggestions or a message that you would always like to give to families and teachers who want to support a blind child?
Daniel: I think a very easy way to conceptualize the balance of support. Some people kind of ask, like, how much support is too much support? What kind of support should it be? You know, and we tend to trip over ourselves about whether or not we're offering too much or too little or not enough, or or or what kind of support is that is to think about the difference between doing with and doing for. blindness so often becomes about doing for people doing for you, people managing your life around you, managing your effects and your fair affairs around you, or managing you through an activity or an environment. In the guise of doing with, but really you're doing it for because the blind the blind person is often managed in a manner where they're pretty much disengaged or not fully engaged in the activity or server surroundings or environment in which they're being managed through, right? So doing with is about Wow. It's really about sharing in an activity, sharing in an experience that may involve facilitating a person a person's
Hayley: Okay,
Daniel: ability to to manage in that experience, such as, for example, having a guide runner. but it's more about
Hayley: I don't know
Daniel: about Maintaining an openness whereby both people or multiple people, including the blind person, are all fully engaged and fully connected with what's going on, and where a blind person has full agency over what's going on. Not agency over another person, but agency with another person, meaning that it's like any relationship. You come to an agreement over how things are to be managed. Where do we go? What are we doing? How are we doing it? And so often blind people are told how it's supposed to be done. You're told how to use your cane. You're told how to be guided. You're told by whom and where you're going to be guided. You're told what systems you're going to access and how you're going to access them. There's a whole lot of things that blind people are told to do and expected to do. And that personal agency I keep talking about becomes quite eroded or suspended so often. And so I think if we bear in mind what are the differences here between doing for and doing with, I think that helps to preserve a relational. interaction that doesn't become a power structure, that doesn't become a yeah, that doesn't become custodial in in in one way or another.
Hayley: Is there anything you would like to add that I have not asked about yet?
Daniel: You have been quite thorough. So I'm not sure that there is. Other than that, for me, all of this is about personal freedom. It's all about free will. I'm not here to tell people or even suggest to people how people should or shouldn't do things. I am not A proponent of a lot of the prescripted ways in which blind people are taught to do things or told to do things. There's a right way, there's a wrong way. I I'm not a fan of that. I'm much more a fan of people finding their own way, but people being supported to find their own way. People finding their own way with others, as we all must do. we all share the planet with eight billion people. So, there's no going it alone. And you can only go so far if others are doing for you. So for me it's a matter of people finding their freedom and claiming their freedom. and for me, it's often a matter of s staying out of the way of that process. So I think freedom is really the the key concept here.
Hayley: So where can our listeners learn more about your work and about World Access for the Blind?
Daniel: these days probably Googling is the easiest way. if you Google me, you'll find out more about me than I myself know. but yes, I mean you can certainly email Daniel dash Kish. that's the minus sign, not the underscore, Daniel dash Kish at one word, world access for the blind, world accessfortheblind.org.
Hayley: Well, thank you very much, Daniel, for joining me today.
Daniel: Thank you, it was a real pleasure.
