About World Access for the Blind

World Access for the Blind is a non-profit organization employing unique teaching strategies to help blind and sighted people throughout the world improve their quality of life, and dedicated to the conviction that blind people can learn to see without sight, and sighted people can learn to see better.

• Organizational Overview
• Our Vision
• Guiding Philosophy
• Operational Concept
• Conquering the Challenges of Blindness
• About Our Board of Directors
• Organizational Reports
• About Dan Kish, Executive Director

Organizational Overview

"We can see with our ears." This telling proclamation by a 13-year-old student of World Access for the Blind (WAFTB) in a TV interview reflects our core conviction - that blind people can learn to see without sight.  Daniel Kish, Co-founder and Director of WAFTB, lost his sight as an infant; yet, he grew as a normal child free to enjoy the world and learn by doing. Dan accomplished this by teaching himself when very young to "see" with sonar by clicking his tongue, which enables identification of spatial relationships using acoustics (hearing) - similar to how a bat uses echolocation. Dan holds Masters' degrees in Psychology and special Education where he emphasized the study of children at risk, perceptual development, and information processing. Dan has since conducted ground-breaking research in expanding human perception. Being the first certified blind mobility instructor, Dan lead the establishment of WAFTB in 2000 to share his unique knowledge and perspective to address the significant challenges confronting blind people. WAFTB is the first organization to be directed by a totally blind, certified orientation and mobility specialist who uses echolocation as part of his professional practice and daily life. We are the only organization known to focus on developing and implementing comprehensive, innovative approaches to improving the functioning of blind people by enhancing sensory processing. We are also the only one to develop and disseminate curricula and instructional training for sensory enhancement, receiving international acclaim for this successful work.

According to the American Foundation for the Blind nearly 75% of blind people in the U.S. are unemployed, costing the federal government about 4 billion dollars annually (Prevent Blindness America, 1994). Despite many decades of worthy and charitable intentions, rampant unemployment and poor education continue to leave most blind people without the skills and resources to emerge from isolation, poverty, and restriction. WAFTB, established in the new millennium, applies long awaited, high impact approaches of the modern age to open the way for blind children and adults to find freedom in their full potential. We demonstrate compellingly that blind people can achieve the same quality of life as sighted people when they gain the same freedom to access the world as sighted people. WAFTB uses an innovative, No-Limits approach to equalize opportunities for the success of blind people. Under Dan's direction, sensory specialists, engineers, and scientists develop and teach modern approaches to allow blind people to "see" with little or no sight. Our comprehensive approach incorporates the following components:

1. COMMUNITY ACCESS: improving access to community programs and resources including transportation, print, leisure and recreation (such as scouts and senior groups), education, vocation, commerce, and social services.
2. STUDENT FOCUS: working directly with students of all ages, blind and sighted, professional and consumer, through direct instruction and presentations to address blindness education, professional growth, enrichment, skills development, positive attitude building, sensory enhancement (such as sonar), informational counseling, and family dynamics without imposing financial hardship.
3. ACCESS TECHNOLOGY: developing and consulting in development of blindness related technology addressing alternative perception, computer and print reading, location information, and accessible public information, such as talking signs and audible traffic signals to improve access to all aspects of the world.
4. PUBLIC AWARENESS: raising public consciousness about blindness by broad dissemination of compelling information through presentations and publications (such as our informative video "Seeing without Sight") about the full capabilities and access challenges faced by blind people.
5. PARTNERSHIPS: establishing networks and collaborations to mobilize expertise and resources toward developing, evaluating, and distributing critical technology, services, and information.

Our innovative approach to blind living grows from an unwavering belief in ability, not disability - in gain rather than loss. To our knowledge, our approach is the only one spearheaded by a unique system of human sonar. By using sonar enhancement technology called "SoundFlash" and specialized techniques also developed by WAFTB, students use sound to tell what and where things are as if using dim flashes of light. Some students actually describe the experience as if they were "seeing again." We aim to meet more than the minimal requirement for survival. Thus, we infuse our revolutionary approach with a no LIMITS philosophy - affirming that every person, blind or sighted, can enjoy the freedom and strength of character to seek and discover his own limits and strengths without suffering limits imposed by others. This philosophy is well characterized in our TeamBat program which focuses on self-reliance, team cooperation, and personal leadership by providing recreational avenues for learning through activities such as solo (not tandem) mountain biking, mountaineering, and ball play.

Our approach puts a decisive end to passivity and dependence. Our students become active, self-directed, productive participants in the sighted world. For example, Brian, who lost his vision suddenly at 14, has been featured in nearly a dozen national and international news publications and TV programs as a blind mountain biker able to negotiate technical terrain at high speeds on his own bike. Shannon, a middle aged woman who lost her sight in 1997, used our sonar techniques to walk 200 yards across a parking lot to a favorite restaurant after years of being unable to cross a simple street. And, Daniel, an 11-year-old boy in México struck blind by a bus 4 years before, once angry and bewildered, sincerely thanks our staff in Spanish "Because I did not know that the mouth click would help me know where walls, trees, and things like that are." WAFTB rounds off its approach by employing former students as Instructional Coaches to share their success and help others to learn what they've learned.

WAFTB garners international recognition through over a dozen invited presentations and training camps delivered yearly to thousands of participants throughout the world. We have been featured in publications, such as "Popular Science," "Business Week," and a textbook called "Early Focus." We have also received international exposure from over a dozen TV and radio programs including More Than Human (Discovery Channel), NBC Nightly News, Ripley's "Believe It or Not, and several top European news programs. World Access for the Blind's ground breaking research into expanding human perception, together with world travels and a wealth of professional exchange, allow us to learn and grow from many perspectives, strategies, and approaches to the condition of blindness. It is this diversity of knowledge and will to action that form the foundations of World Access for the Blind, and our ability to kindle a New Light for blind and sighted people world wide.

Our Vision

World Access for the Blind strives to improve the quality of interaction between blind and sighted people by facilitating equal access to the world's resources and opportunities. We are interested in more than meeting the minimum requirements for functioning and life satisfaction. We believe in mutual respect, consideration, and accommodation of blind and sighted people by society. We expect to see the blind population on mass rise to levels of productive participation and achievement to equal that of sighted people.

We will develop and demonstrate the effectiveness of a modern, holistic approach to blind movement and navigation based on knowledge of human perception, and a philosophy of No Limits. We will establish a new paradigm of instruction, and pioneer a new approach to delivering these modern strategies. We will also help to mobilize resources, facilitate collaborations, and provide specialized expertise in nonvisual human perception to guide and focus the development of effective and respectful strategies and technologies to expand nonvisual capabilities.

Guiding Philosophy

On Blindness

World Access for the Blind supports the idea that blindness is not as disabling as is commonly believed. Barriers to functioning associated with blindness arise more from poor interaction between blind people and society than from intrinsic deficiency. We characterize blindness as a condition of life style requiring a strong capacity to adapt. Blindness should not deny access to all the experiences and opportunities of the WORLD. In this spirit we proceed with two convictions:

NO LIMITS: While everyone faces limits, we assert that limits should not be imposed or presumed upon anyone. We all, blind or not, should enjoy the freedom and strength of character to seek and discover our own limits and strengths.

NO DIFFERENCE: Blind people possess the same needs as everyone else - to be free from undue restriction, to be capable and competent, to know a sense of camaraderie and belonging to the world, and to respect themselves and draw the respect of others. They hold the same ambitions and dreams as others, and are nourished by the same hope and assurance that they can achieve these aspirations. Blind people can achieve the same quality of life as sighted people when they gain the same freedom to access the world as sighted people.

On Teaching and Learning

World Access for the Blind defines disability as: "A lack of capacity to function in life due to diminished access
to physical, psychological, and/or social resources." (See *Embracing Our World, VIII-G, for a detailed discussion about disability and access.) This definition does not focus on individual impairments or presumptions about how impairments must impact the individual. Rather, it focuses on how one
accesses the world, on one's relationship to oneself and one's environment. Thus, World Access for the Blind considers disability to be relatively separate from impairment. Anyone can be disabled or highly capable regardless of the extent to which they may be impaired.

We do not settle for the minimum requirements for functioning, but instead reach for the limits beyond our limits. Our goal for our students is that they understand that they have the ability to direct their own lives rich with quality, promise, and as much excitement and intrigue as they could wish for. They need not rely on the good graces of others, but can make it on their own good graces, and share these graces in a worthy manner
with others.

The key to effective living is how well we adapt to maximize our access to ourselves and our environment. Our first duty as teachers is to help foster students' ability to gain fully functional and esthetic access to their environment. to do this, we use perception based instruction to focus on a student's ability to perceive the environment more completely, process what is perceived with more sophistication, and act on the environment with greater facility. (For more details about perception based instruction, see *Alternative Perception Instruction.) it is through optimized perception that we can be most aware of our options, and be able to exercise them to maximum effect. With this in mind, we infuse our instructional practice with the following principals:

• Respectful Commitment to the Needs of All Students
• Self Directed Discovery
• Good Rapport
• Teachers Are Learners First

Respectful Commitment to the Needs of All Students

Our perception based program is not tailored according to the "specific" or "individualized" needs of students. We believe that all students have the same basic needs - to gain full access to their environment in order to participate fully and in a self-directed manner in society, within cultural imperatives. (See *Guiding Philosophy for more information on our "No Difference" perspective.) The individualization requirement of educational and rehabilitation legislation has been misunderstood to mean that different students have different basic needs. These individualized needs are often determined by assessments, and written into individualized plans as outcomes. This interpretation leaves huge margins for allowing "needs" and "outcomes" to be determined according to variables not related to the student - administrative imperatives, budget, personnel availability, and teacher qualifications. By this interpretation, it can be decided that some students just don't "need" as much access to the world as others, or that meeting this need is too much trouble for some. Sufficient instruction, technology, and support required to meet these basic needs has become confused with the basic needs themselves. The individualized planning process has become a method of determining what supports to provide based on individual student need, rather than ensuring the provision of supports to meet basic needs which should be considered sovereign to all contributing members of society. Yet, focus on the true need, access, is often lost.

Our approach is to begin a priori with the assertion that all students have the need to participate equally in society at all levels, according to informed choice. These needs are broken down according to access to the physical, symbolic, social, psychological, and physiological environments. Full access to these environments optimizes self-directed participation in society, and quality of life. Our goals and objectives are not about what a student needs, because the needs are already self evident. Our goals and objectives are about strategies for meeting these needs. It is assumed that these needs can be met for all students who are conscious, motivated, and capable of learning, regardless of the extent of disability, given the appropriate strategies. It is further assumed that most students are capable of learning when the learning style is understood, and that the motivation of most students can be encouraged or triggered by a respectful recognition of the student's potential, and commitment to their need for full access. When we maintain sight of the basic need, our strategies remain true to those needs, and do not become obscured by factors not relevant to the student.

Self Directed Discovery

Effective teaching is about helping a student develop a dynamic means of establishing a relationship with the world for themselves based on their direct awareness of the environment through their own senses. In this way, they form their own comprehension of what is correct, what is effective, what is adaptive, what gives them the best access to what they want and need. It is often more richly nourishing to touch the flame for oneself than to heed the warning of another. In our cooking and camping program, our students literally reach into the flames with us so they understand the heat, but also learn to consider what is best to touch or not touch. While hiking, for instance, our students are never physically guided, and rarely told where to go. They are instructed on how to decide for themselves where to go, and how to get there.  Even if they follow the sounds of another ahead of them, they do so under their own perceptual-motor abilities, and not the helping hand of another.

This process of scaffolding often necessitates facing students with situations that are uncomfortable. Challenging situations typically are uncomfortable. This is because the nervous system undergoes a period of disequilibrium when facing a novel situation until the new information is assimilated, and the individual becomes familiar with the factors of the challenge - bringing it back into equilibrium. This brings us to our third principle.

Good Rapport

There is a necessity for rapport based on trust, respect, and amiability. This is imperative, because this provides the student with the security to help them face challenges with improved adaptation. There is a difference between tension and stress. The healthy tension of facing challenge can help us access the psychological and physiological resources to assimilate new information in order to meet challenges. Stress or distress can impede access to these same resources. In other words, a distressed organism tends not to be able to adapt to a novel situation and regain equilibrium. When there is good rapport, the student can tune into the relative stability of the teacher, and learn to access these resources by a kind of empathic modeling. The teacher can also scaffold the discovery process and provide reassurance where appropriate. By providing a kind of security through camaraderie, the teacher frees the student to engage the equilibration process to face the challenge more constructively. While it is certainly necessary at times for the teacher to take the lead in the instructional process, possibly facing students with challenges against strong  disinclination, this is always done with a solid respect for the increasing quality of the student's access to the world. The fourth principal is thus here indicated.

Teachers Are Learners First

The best teachers are the most willing learners. One way to help maintain respect for the student's learning process is to see ourselves always as learners first, and to open ourselves to learning from our students as much as we teach. We remain always engaged in the discovery process with our students, rather than conducting the process for them. We believe that if we are not learning as much as we think we're teaching, than we may not be teaching as much as we think.

Operational Concept

Society makes information and resources easily available to the eye. World Access for the Blind respects, values, and encourages the many wonderful benefits that vision affords. Society's predominately visual approach opens doors and inroads to the achievement of dreams and ambitions for sighted people. In the face of this same approach, however, blind people typically find doors to opportunities locked and barred - restricting freedom of choice, action, and participation in the world community.

World Access for the Blind ties its active approaches to its guiding philosophies of "No Limits" and "No Difference", so that all activity progresses in a manner that is productive and respectful. To this end, we explore and investigate the effectiveness, usefulness, respectfulness, and application of innovative strategies and technologies for facilitating access to the world by the blind. The blind have tried many approaches throughout history to improve their interaction with the world. Many have found different uses for different approaches under different circumstances.

Some approaches have become common, while others have fallen into obscurity. There are many reasons for the wide spread acceptance or dismissal of approaches that go beyond whether the approach is effective. These may include adequacy of implementation, style of marketing and promotion, timeliness, robustness and validity of experimental designs, and financial backing to name a few. The continued high rate of unemployment and lack of community participation of the blind, together with persistent public misconceptions about them, bespeak the shortcomings of many predominant approaches used today.

World Access for the Blind is establishing a systematic, adaptation based criteria to examine these approaches carefully and determine how they may impact nonvisual functioning in a comprehensive way. As part of this process, we are now developing and testing technology and strategies with students. These efforts will result in the establishment of a new profession centered on alternative ways of perceiving the environment. Given the latest in neural and rehabilitative science, this new profession has already taken root in the modern recognition that blindness is not a condition of deficit requiring external remediation, but a condition of gain requiring the mobilization of adaptive mechanisms already intrinsic to the human organism. This approach will maintain scientific rigor as well as public appeal, and will be quickly recognized as a high impact, medically viable approach.

Conquering the Challenges of Blindness

According to the 1995 census there are over two million people in the U.S. whose visual impairment is severe enough to cause significant impact on the course of their daily living. Specifically they cannot drive or read standard print, and their ability to move around may be compromised. About twenty-five percent (25%) of that group is totally blind or without usable vision. World wide, the visually impaired population is estimated to number in excess of 37 million people (World Health Organization, 2003).

In the U.S. around seventy-five percent (75%) of working age blind adults are unable to maintain gainful employment (American Foundation for the Blind). In the population of children born with blindness that number rises to about ninety percent (90%). Without employment, it may be impossible to acquire the means and resources to participate fully and productively in the world community, resulting in isolation and poverty. This costs the U.S. government over 4 billion dollars annually (Prevent Blindness America). The remaining twenty five percent (25%), however, do obtain employment, often finding secure, respectable careers in nearly every field.

The achievement of that small percentage suggests that the dual problems of under employment and lack of community participation do not appear to arise strictly from reduced vision. We implicate lack of access to societal resources and lowered expectations and standards on the part of society, and of the visually impaired themselves as critical barriers to purposeful participation in the world community.

Society functions primarily through the smooth exchange of goods, services, and companionship. However, information and resources are made most readily available to the eye. The societal infrastructure and exchange network are designed to optimize the functioning and enjoyment of sighted people - facing the blind with exclusion from this network.

The world is full of dangers and wonders that assume the use of vision to partake and appreciate them. Interactive sports, nature's pastimes such as backpacking and rock climbing, extreme sports (e.g. mountain biking or power skating), leisure pastimes such as books and video games, and community programming such as scouts and little league activities are often closed to the blind.

Still more threatening than being cut off from commerce and societal exchange is the negative state of general world consciousness regarding blind people. Popular belief has always contended that blindness leads directly to deficiency and incapacity. Consequently, blind people are often cast in a role of helpless dependence difficult to escape (“The Making of a Blind Man” by Dr. James Goodman). In addition to pervading general public consciousness, these views of deficiency in blindness have cast their sobering influence on all education and rehabilitative service professions, often resulting in the application of approaches that fall short of preparing and motivating blind clients to reach their full potential.

Children even more than adults tend to rise to the expectations set for them. Research has shown that low expectations tend to foster low achievement. For every time blind children are told they can do something, they are far more often warned they cannot or should not.

Blind people face significant challenges in accessing the world in the following three areas:

1. The physical world - refers to interaction with the physical environment. How does one know what and where things are and how to obtain them? How does one understand where one is or how to get where one wants to go?
   
   Blind individuals may be disinclined to move freely and comfortably or, out of apprehension, society restricts movement of the blind individual. Research shows that in the case of children, this impedes many areas of development that ultimately result in unemployment, lack of participation in the community, social isolation, psychological maladjustment, and a host of physiological infirmities.
   
   Purposeful, self-directed movement is regarded as one of the more challenging areas faced by blind people. While lack of sight is often compensated by enhancing other senses, social barriers and mechanisms of over protection often hamper the development of functional movement in blind people.
   
   Approaches to address the movement challenges of blind people have traditionally regarded these challenges from a "deficit" perspective, and have sought to remediate these perceived deficits by reducing the movement process into discrete skills, and attempting to reconstitute this process by teaching clients these skills. Results have been questionable.
    
2. The symbolic world - refers to the representation of language and exchange of ideas and information through symbols, including the written word and pictures. Society uses presentation of information through symbols to facilitate the exchange of goods and services. This exchange provides the principal conduit for commerce, social contact, staying connected with world events, accessing resources and opportunities, warning of danger, providing direction, and managing day to day affairs. Symbols used by society are typically presented only to the visual system, so people with impaired vision are partly or totally excluded from this network of information exchange. Attempts to address the matter of disrupted information exchange have only focused on small pieces of the problem, and have often done so without input from blind people. They have often relied on the clemency of public agencies and corporations to accommodate blindness needs, but response to these needs has shown itself to be very limited.
    
3. The social world - refers to the quality of interaction between the blind and the social environment. An impaired ability to get around and function well in the world, together with substantial barriers to conventional forms of reading and writing compromise the ease and freedom of interaction between blind and sighted people. Healthy, constructive interaction is further impeded by blindness myths and stereotypes, negative expectations and perceptions, lower standards, and fears or apprehensions residing in both the sighted and blind people. Traditionally, social programming have segregated blind people into "blind sports", relegated blind participants to menial positions, or imposed contrived roles that impose artificial disadvantages on sighted participants.

The public sector appears to lack a sound comprehension of the unique strengths and challenges facing blind people in a sighted world and how to address these challenges effectively and respectfully. Assistive technology and adaptive strategies are currently sparse, poorly supported, and expensive. In addition, they are often developed and designed without a solid understanding of the nonvisual perceptual system. Finally, they are often developed in isolation from other endeavors, leading to redundancies, and inefficient use of resources. Availability of public funding to provide assistive technology and instruction in the use of adaptive strategies is scarce.

Our approach to addressing this lack of access to the world by blind people is based on modern neural, perception, and rehabilitative science. It is thus rooted in the recognition of blindness as a condition of gain requiring adaptation, rather than loss requiring remediation. We view the movement process as one of freedom and fluidity to be learned in a holistic, contextual, discovery based fashion. We propose that, given conditions of mutual respect and regard of equality, adaptive mechanisms are free to activate, enabling the blind individual to achieve optimal levels of functioning and personal accomplishment. Our approach is three-fold:

• First, we develop and use specialized techniques and assistive technology to improve access of blind individuals to personal resources.  We improve mental skills, such as cognitive mapping, memory, and attitudes about self; and physical skills, such as perceptual-motor functioning, speed, and coordination. With improved access to personal resources, blind individuals can face and surmount the challenges before them from a position of strength, purpose, and authority.
   
• Second, we work to improve access to the world environment by guiding the efficient development of effective, respectful technology and strategies.  We do this by infusing development efforts with knowledge of nonvisual perception, and by facilitating collaborative development efforts.
   
• Third, we mobilize resources and garner public attention by raising public awareness of the issues relevant to blind people.  We bring the strengths and potentials of blind people and the challenges they face into the public eye. By improving the ability of blind people to access the world and by helping to bridge the immense gaps in understanding between the sighted and blind, it is expected that blind people will gain a level of functioning through access to societal resources comparable to that of the sighted.

World Access for the Blind has determined that modern, state of the art sensor systems developed with the benefit of today's rapid innovation in computer-human interface technology make possible the production of affordable, effective, and user friendly sensor devices to extend perception by alternative means. We favor a person centered system the functioning of which does not rely on specialized infrastructure or public clemency, but rests completely in the control of the user. Vision is simply a sophisticated piece of biotechnology developed by nature over millions of years to perform specific functions.

World Access for the Blind stands on the frontier in guiding the development of modern technology and strategies that emulate the functions of vision. For example, the application of echolocation and sonar systems to the enhancement of blind movement have already found fruition and can be brought to market for wide spread availability within the next 2 years. Portable, fully integrated magnification systems can be readily designed from off-the-shelf video technology for the partially sighted in less than a year. Preliminary research into optical and radar systems have similarly shown exciting promise of unprecedented access to the physical and symbolic environments for the blind and partially sighted.

World Access for the Blind is laying the ground work and conceptual framework for the coordination of an interdisciplinary, applied research task force among top scientists to design, in short and long term, high definition sensory systems for blind use. We are also mobilizing specialized expertise and knowledge to develop curricula and instructional approaches to enable blind students to make full and effective use of these devices and gain much improved access to the world at all levels.

Extensive research of blinded veterans shows that visually impaired people who are secure and capable in their movements are better adjusted psychologically and have an easier time maintaining gainful employment. We have found that they are more socially accepted by their sighted peers, and they are more likely to participate in commerce and in a wider range of recreational and social activities.

The positive impact of effective and safe movement can change lives. It engenders confidence and knowledge of self-worth which is critical to making a cogent difference in the total quality of life for blind people. It will open the way for the blind to participate in recreational and social activities with the sighted community and will give blind people the confidence and motivation to learn skills and expertise that will better enable them to maintain gainful employment.

Organizational Reports

Financials and Annual Reports

"We Can See With Our Ears"