President
World Access for the Blind

Daniel Kish is the lead founder and CEO of World Access for the Blind. This non-profit organization uniquely combines a self directed, no limits approach with expertise in perceptual development, positive psychology, person-centered instruction, and public education to develop and mobilize innovative, high impact, achievement oriented strategies to challenge all forms of blindness throughout the world. Daniel holds Master's degrees in Developmental Psychology and Special Education, emphasizing perceptual development, family dynamics, and children at risk. He holds two national certifications in Orientation and Mobility, COMS and NOMC. Daniel is the first totally blind individual to obtain both certifications, and has maintained employment in this capacity since 1996 as an itinerant instructor for many school districts, rehabilitation agencies, and private persons throughout the world. He has always made a point to work in close collaboration with all professionals and other supports in relation to any given student. Consequently, Daniel has collaborated extensively with therapists and specialists very renowned in the areas of neural science and perception. Given his unique combination of training, background, and associations, Daniel refers to himself as a Perceptual Mobility Specialist, emphasizing in his practice the perceptual foundations of self directed mobility toward high achievement. Daniel has worked with many types of students of all ages and many cultures, with much experience with deaf-blindness, autism, and sensory integration disorders.

in addition to his work as a Perceptual Mobility Specialist, Daniel has coordinated and supervised all types of educational and enrichment programs including assistive technology, vision instruction, student/family coaching, peer tutoring, public awareness, and a mentor program. Daniel has stayed and worked extensively with dozens of families in many countries to help them break down the barriers to realizing their children's potential to achieve the highest quality of life. He has presented and conducted over a hundred invited presentations and workshops internationally on all topics related to human perception and blindness, including professional development trainings for university faculty. Of particular note are his seminars on the development of the perceptual and imaging systems in the brain, how this development is disrupted by dependency conditioning, such as sighted guide and lack of early cane training, how this disruption stunts short and long term psychological and physical development, and how this disruption can be remediated by reestablishing natural processes of self directed discovery. Among many presentations world wide, Daniel has presented an invited paper on this topic to the 2005 European conference of the International Council for Education of People with Visual Impairment (ICEVI). He has recently begun to establish relief projects to foster freedom of community participation of blind people in "under developed" countries. Among other things, this has involved developing and implementing a multiphase model for training individuals, blind and sighted, to provide Perceptual Mobility Coaching to other blind people.

Though Daniel's main expertise lies in developing all aspects of human perception in sighted as well as blind people, he is perhaps best known for his expertise in echolocation. In this area he has conducted pilot research, and has completed one of the most comprehensive literature reviews detailing the nature and utility of echolocation in blind humans. From this research, in-depth collaborations with noted scientists and perception experts, and many thousands of hours experience with students of all types and cultures, Daniel created the first systematic, comprehensive echolocation curriculum for advanced training. So advanced are the results of this training that Daniel has coined the term "FlashSonar" to underscore the advantages to the advanced training and use of echolocation as compared to traditional approaches to echolocation. Daniel and some of his students have applied FlashSonar combined with other techniques to riding bicycles independently at moderate speeds through unfamiliar environments, and to participate effectively and independently in other complex activities such as skating, ball play, and solo wilderness travel. Through World Access for the Blind and its partners, Daniel is engaged in global efforts to share the advantages of perception based instruction and FlashSonar in the professional training and personal development of all blind people.

In addition to prolific, international newspaper and magazine coverage, including People Magazine, Los Angeles Times, and Der Spiegel Magazine, Daniel and his students have demonstrated the functionality and educational relevance of FlashSonar on dozens of major national and international TV programs including Ripley's "Believe It or Not", Prime Time Live, Discovery channel documentaries, and airings internationally including the U.K., Armenia, Japan, Australia, western Europe, and from Canada to South America. Daniel and a colleague have recently published a section on audition training in a textbook called "Early Focus: Working with young children who are blind and visually impaired and their families" edited by Prof. Fazzi and Dr. Pogrund. Daniel's work has also been included in other noted popular and technical books, Including "a Sense of the World" by Jason Roberts, "Spaces Speak, Are You Listening? Experiencing Aural Architecture" by Former MIT Professor Barry Blesser, and "Understanding the Nature of Sensory Integration with Diverse Populations" edited by Smith-Roley, Blanche and Schaaf.

With support and guidance of Dr. Leslie Kay, Daniel has pioneered efforts to combine sonic with ultrasonic sonar technologies and strategies to form a powerful and versatile approach to nonvisual spatial perception and self directed movement. This work has been covered in various publications including "Business Week," and "Popular Science," and was featured on NBC Nightly News, a 30 minute European documentary, and a 30 minute Fox Television documentary.

Directly inspired by Prof. Steve Mann of Toronto University and Dr. Doug Baldwin of the Institute for Innovative Blind Navigation, Daniel believes that artificial vision systems are on the immediate horizon. Daniel is working with several noted blindness organizations to lay the ground work for global cooperation among top scientists, perception experts, blind consumer groups, and funders toward the development of a focused consortium to design and apply person centered technologies and strategies that will greatly enhance the brain's ability to perceive and function in the world at large, and to infuse these developments with a sound understanding of human perception and blindness, which he feels has been historically lacking. This step is realized in part by Daniel's participation in organizing the first World Congress on Blind WayFinding in the fall of 2005.

Daniel and his associates have designed the first portable device to enhance Flash Sonar for day to day use. This device is called SoundFlash, and its development is generously supported by Alcon Labs Inc,. NEC Foundation, and Maestro Productions.

Through continuous public awareness efforts, Daniel and his students passionately demonstrate that blindness in itself need not be as limiting as has been historically assumed. They believe and demonstrate that it is society that imposes limitations by presenting information almost exclusively to the eye. Daniel asserts that the liberation of blind people depends upon the awareness that blindness bears no shame or intrinsic deficiency. Rather, the deficiency lies primarily in the quality of interaction between the world and the blind. Daniel is deeply dedicated to helping unlock the ability of blind people to challenge these limiting forces with personal assurance and strength, and to stand at last on their own merits in camaraderie and equality with sighted people.

Daniel is grateful to his parents for his liberating up bringing and life experiences, and for the invaluable opportunity to exchange knowledge, perspectives, and insights with Thousands of professionals and consumers all over the world. Having realized that all people struggle with some form of blindness, whether physical or mental, Daniel and his associates have recently expanded their efforts to apply knowledge of perceptual development to challenge all forms of blindness by helping people learn to perceive and understand their world and themselves better, and to apply their understanding to grow and flourish.