Daniel, I really appreciated your contributions to our large student body at the residency and my smaller class. Your stories and comments on their observations were right on target. You pressed them farther.
Daniel Kish
5x TED/TEDx Speaker, Activator of Change, Inspirational Real-Life Bat Man, Motivational Blind Visionary, Global Panelist, Modern Day Explorer, Founder and President of World Access for the Blind
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Daniel Kish
Biography
ACTIVATIONAL | INSPIRATIONAL | MOTIVATIONAL SPEAKER : Totally blind, Daniel taught himself a new way to see. Through World Access For The Blind, he teaches individuals, educators and Fortune 500s a new way to see through everyday challenges. Voted one of the top 10 speakers at TED2015 and PopTech's 'Talk Of The Day,' and featured in over 150 major publications and broadcasts reaching an audience of over 2 billion viewers around the globe, Daniel has served thousands of clients from Fortune 500s such as Apple, PayPal, Proctor & Gamble and more, to individuals of all ages and backgrounds in over 40 countries. His penetrating ability to activate audiences to navigate any challenge is sought world-wide.TRANSFORMATIVE EVENTSWhether presenting an inspirational Keynote speech, motivational seminar, or extended activational workshop, Daniel's audiences enjoy a personally-activating and lasting transformation through his rich and engaging narratives, expressive delivery, compelling demonstrations, and provocative audience participation - recognizing that whatever may be our motivations, inspirations and aspirations, in the end, we must act to affect change. For nearly 20 years, Daniel and his team have garnered a solid reputation for achieving life-changing results, no matter how challenging the conditions. With two Masters degrees and a rare ability to navigate anywhere in total darkness, Daniel is the first blind person ever known to be certified to teach blind people how to navigate. He's also the first to apply these same principles to help everyone, blind and sighted alike - students, educators and 'Captains of Enterprise' alike - to navigate any challenge more effectively and with less fear.Daniel's bearing is richly textured with a dry humor, and presents an effect that has been called "contagiously transformative." Having presented to many non-native English speakers, his speech is carefully measured, clear, and precise. IT ALL STARTED WITH A CLICK Having lost both eyes to cancer as a baby, Daniel's well reputed expertise comes from his own experience learning to navigate the dark unknown. Within a few months of losing his eyes, it became clear to those around him that Daniel was learning to discern the nature and location of objects well beyond his reach. By clicking his tongue on the roof of his mouth, or clapping his hands and listening to the patterns of information that echoed back to him, Daniel began to construct images in his brain of near and distant surroundings that allowed him to navigate freely as he was beginning to see in a new way.HIS VISION IS SOUND The reflected sound patterns are like camera flashes in the dark, or as he calls it - FlashSonar , imprinting his mind with a sort of three-dimensional 'fuzzy geometry' of his surroundings. With this process, Daniel can recognize a narrow pole from several meters away, describe his surroundings in vivid detail, and scan the main features of a building from several hundred yards/meters, in the pitch black of night.HIS METHOD IS SCIENCEYears later, in a series of ground-breaking scientific brain-scan studies that Daniel helped to design, these images were discovered to be the result of the echoes activating his visual cortex, the part of his brain responsible for 'seeing'. Through a staggering twist of neural plasticity that has since laid new groundwork for multiple fields of science, Daniel's ears have become his eyes, eventually earning him the title "the real-life bat man" the world over.As the darkness around him receded, Daniel's freedom to understand and relate to his world on his own terms blossomed. His whole body from head to feet became a live antenna - every sensation providing critical contribution to his perception and navigation. No resource of information or adaptive strategy was left untapped by Daniel or his parents, a practice that has come to characterize Daniel's approach to every situation and endeavor.HOW DO YOU RAISE A BLIND CHILD?Daniel's parents knew his blindness would pose significant challenges, and they knew that fear would compromise his ability to face those challenges. Therefore, fear and doubt held no sway in his upbringing. Walking himself to his neighborhood school, finding his own way around new places, bicycling on his own, tree climbing, competitive games of tag, ball play, and general roughhousing were just a few of the typical activities that characterized Daniel's active boyhood.Fear of the unknown, man's most primal fear, was thus neutralized in young Daniel's mind freeing him to face all of life's challenges with little trepidation. He now refers to this as "befriending the unknown" and he is frequently called upon to share its benefits with everyone from babies and teachers, to top executives and world class scientists.DISRUPTING THE SIGHTED STATUS-QUO OF LOW EXPECTATIONS OF BLIND PEOPLE BY SELF-DIRECTED 'DYNAMIC NETWORK NAVIGATION'As Daniel grew to face an expanding world of increasing complexity designed by sighted people for sighted people, he found the need to leverage his own capacities and efficacies by engaging and managing networks of visual support from those around him. He had observed many times that asking for sighted help can, and often does, lead to dependency and passivity among blind people. Resolved not to let this hold him back, Daniel learned to maintain his autonomy while engaging support from others, when needed, by remaining active, vigilant, and true to his own capabilities. This process, which Daniel now calls dynamic network navigation, has helped him to navigate through turbulent and uncharted territories in his own enterprises, providing him with a wealth of experiences and perspectives in leadership, entrepreneurship, and situational analysis.BREAKING DOWN BARRIERS AND WRITING HISTORYDuring his years in college Daniel conducted pilot research to develop the first documented methodology to teach what he called FlashSonar echolocation to other blind people. This led to him becoming the first totally blind person in the world known to earn Orientation and Mobility certification to teach blind people how to navigate.This certification was historically denied to blind persons, so Daniel's historic entry into this field has helped open the way for other blind instructors, thus mobilizing a monumental paradigm shift in all fields related to blindness.A PIONEERING MOVEMENT EMERGES IN WORLD ACCESS FOR THE BLINDThe unprecedented freedom to navigate with a new form of vision demonstrated by Daniel and many of his blind students, riding skateboards and bikes, hiking mountains on their own, competing in sports, and participating more widely in their communities, activated a wave of media intrigue that spanned the globe. In answer to floods of enthusiastic correspondence, Daniel led the founding of the California-registered non-profit organization World Access for the Blind in 2000 to help blind people bring about for themselves new levels of self-directed capability, achievement, liberty, quality of life and, especially, dignity that was historically believed impossible for the blind to attain.THE WAY FORWARD TO CHANGING MORE LIVES BY CONQUERING THE 'DARK UNKNOWN'Daniel and his team unswervingly aim to help activate people to perceive and understand their world and themselves better. Daniel's premise is simple - if we want to change the world, we must change ourselves. His principals for activating change are simple - challenge everything we think we know by stepping beyond the programming of conventional wisdom and finding our own blind spots; befriend the unknown by conquering fear and doubt; find the knowns within the unknown through points of reference; and recognize and apply all available supports and resources through dynamic network navigation.Daniel's special interests and areas of study include at-risk children, family dynamics, neural-anthropology, industrial-organizational psychology, the science of perception and action, interactive networking, ancient music, spirituality, healthy living, personal transformation, and all things of the great outdoors. GLOBAL MEDIA SPREAD THE WORDThe revolutionary impact of activation training has been featured in over a dozen scholarly and popular books, nearly every major TV network in the world, and a broad range of radio broadcasts, peer-reviewed journals, and top publications.Daniel Kish and former WAFTB student - now Perceptual Navigation Instructor - Brian Bushway are featured in the official music video for X Ambassadors' 'RENEGADES' that has garnered over 25 million views on YouTube and Vevo.The last five years alone have seen the work of Daniel and his team featured in printed publications including Chronicle of Philanthropy, Men's Journal (voted sixth best read of 2011 by Readers Digest), BBC World Service, The Week, The Smithsonian, National Geographic, Scholastic Magazine, Wall Street Journal, U.S. News and World Report, Scientific American, Psychology Today, Popular Science, Washington Post, and Success Magazine; TV broadcasts including NBC News TODAY, ABC Nightly News, CNN and CNN International, Discovery Daily Planet, Guinness World Records, HD Net's News and World Report, The Weather Channel's Human Eclipse, and BBC Horizon Science; radio broadcasts including BBC Radio, and NPR'S This American Life, Morning Edition, and All Things Considered; and a multitude more.Himself a prolific writer, Daniel has contributed to numerous textbooks, peer reviewed journals, popular magazines, and specialty periodicals. Publication of Daniel's textbook on teaching FlashSonar , the first of its kind, was released in the first quarter of 2017, to be followed by two more books under negotiation about Daniel's life and the hard science behind his approach.
Daniel Kish
Featured Videos
Current: TED: How I Use Sonar to Navigate The World
Time 13:08
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Daniel Kish
Featured Keynote Programs
Blind Vision
Daniel tells the story of how restriction, limitation, lack of freedom, and fear can cripple people with sight and without. His presentation guides the audience through the inspiring story of innovation and hope, and how lives are being changed.
Sample Presentation and Workshop Topics
Among the many monikers bestowed on him, Daniel refers to himself as an activational presenter, because his audiences go away more than delighted and inspired - activated with a deeper purpose to improve themselves, and help to support and activate others. "What we think and how we feel is critical, but the end product ultimately depends on the actions we take." Daniel's lifelong process of adapting successfully to his blindness, helping thousands of others, blind and sighted, to adapt to their challenges, applying lessons learned from that process to growing a business, and his prolific world travels and extensive exchanges with noted experts from many disciplines positions him to present engagingly and informatively on a broad range of topics. Generally, his themes revolve around activating ourselves and others around us to adapt to any condition, and navigating any challenge by dynamically identifying and managing the rich network of resources and supports within and around us. He presence his message in practical terms through Keynotes, seminars, and extended workshops designed to activate self improvement, improved productivity, and improved networking.
Activating Creativity and Positive Transformation
Lessons learned from blind people who have learned to see.
Creativity can be defined as bringing something new or distinctive into being. Positive transformation can be defined as catalyzing the evolution of something into something more. In order to bring something new into being, we must renew ourselves. Newness created within us spreads from us into the world around us. The answer lies in activating renewal and change in our own brain.
Dynamic Network Navigating
The Step Beyond Action Is Interaction
Seeing is freeing. It is the drive for personal freedom to understand the world around us and our place in it that lies at the heart of development for all of us. This is no less true for blind people. Blind people must optimize their senses to adapt to what we cannot see, and strategically see through others much of what we cannot see for ourselves. For blind people, freedom transcends independence and self-reliance to include active networking and interactive exchange. Blind people become experts at navigating networks, and using networks to navigate. Actively directed interactions and skilled management of elaborate networks of support and resources are the building blocks of action and knowing.
Daniel Kish
Featured Book
Echo Location and Flash Sonar
by Daniel Kish
Daniel Kish
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Daniel Kish
Featured Articles & Resources
"KISH" A WINNER AT FILM FEST!
WAFTB is proud to announce that "KISH", a film profile of World Access for the Blind Lead Founder and President Daniel Kish, has been awarded the prize for 'Best Documentary...
World Access for the Blind | Navigating the World Using Flash Sonar
“It's impressions about blindness that are far more threatening to blind people than the blindness itself.Think for a moment about your own impressions of blindness. Think...
TED Talk: How I Navigate the World Using Flash Sonar
“Impressions about blindness are far more threatening to blind people than blindness itself.”
A Walk With Daniel Kish, Who Navigates The World Using "Flash Sonar"
Written by Kate Torgovnick May:
Daniel Kish glides a white cane over the marble floor of the Fairmont Pacific Rim Hotel. He’s in Vancouver, Canada, to speak at TED2015, and...
Meet the eyeless man who says he can see (and is probably right)
With both eyes lost to cancer when he was just a toddler, you would expect Daniel Kish to be as blind as a person can get. He's become famous for using a sort of human...
