[blindza] Fw: Re: Blind children taught to see the world like bats
- From: "Jacob Kruger" <jacobk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "BlindZA" <blindza@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 11 Feb 2008 09:45:25 +0200
---original message---
Blind taught to ‘see’ like a bat.
Mark Macaskill.
BLIND British children are to be taught a pioneering bat-style
echolocation technique to visualise their surroundings.
The children are learning how to build up detailed images of
the world around them by clicking their tongue and
interpreting the sound as it echoes back.
The technique is used by animals such as bats, dolphins and
whales to navigate and hunt in the dark.
Bats are able to manoeuvre around caves and catch tiny insects
on the wing by emitting short bursts of high-pitched noise and
reading the sound waves as they bounce back to their highly
evolved ears.
There is emerging evidence that blind people can harness their
sense of hearing – which is often more acute – to interpret
reflected sound and create detailed mental images of their
surroundings, including the distance, size and density of
objects.
The technique is being piloted in Glasgow, where 10 children
aged five to 17 are being taught by staff from Visibility, one
of the city’s oldest charities for the blind. The children are
learning how to make the clicking sound and how to use the
technique even in noisy urban areas, including the underground
system.
Blind people in America, where human echolocation was
pioneered, have learnt to differentiate between people, trees,
buildings and parked cars by interpreting the pitch and timbre
of the echo they produce. Practitioners say they can determine
the height, density and shape of objects up to 100ft away.
People using echolocation can determine the distance they are
from an object by the length of time it takes for the sound to
travel back. Its position can be established by whether the
echo hits the left or right ear first. The size of an object
can be determined by the intensity of the echo. A smaller
object reflects less of the sound wave. The object’s direction
of movement can be established by the pitch of the echo, which
is lower if it is moving away from the source.
Echolocation has been endorsed by Professor Gordon Dutton, one
of Britain’s leading paediatric ophthalmologists, who wants
the technique to be taught to blind and visually impaired
people across the country. There are about 385,000 registered
blind and partially sighted people in Britain.
“It’s very exciting,” said Dutton, of the Royal Hospital for
Sick Children in Glasgow. “I have seen echolocation being used
– it’s quite stunning. It has been demonstrated to me that it
absolutely works.
“Of course there will be scepticism and doubt but the benefits
are without question. It will make a massive difference to the
lives of blind and visually impaired people.”
The project in Glasgow follows a visit last year by Dan Kish,
a 41-year-old blind man from California, who pioneered the
technique. Kish, who runs the not-for-profit organisation
World Access for the Blind, has also been commissioned by the
charity Common Sense to present his method to the families of
blind people in Poole, Dorset.
His command of the technique is such that he can ride a
bicycle on public roads and distinguish between different
types of fruit on trees merely by clicking his tongue. A video
on the website YouTube shows Kish and a number of his friends
demonstrating their skills.
Ben Underwood, a teenager who lost his sight when he was
three, has also become a celebrity in America because of his
ability to use echolocation to ride a bike and to go
skateboarding.
Although there have been no scientific studies of
echolocation, supporters say it can hugely improve the lives
of blind and partially sighted children.
While using a cane allows blind people to identify obstacles
in their path, echolocation is said to provide 360-degree
“vision” and can give them far greater freedom.
“It’s a type of seeing in its own right, which probably uses
similar brain imaging mechanisms to eyesight,” Kish said.
“Students almost invariably become more confident, move faster
and participate in more activities,” he continued. “They show
improved posture and regard themselves as more able to direct
themselves through their environment with less need for
others.
“They are freer, and better able to choose the quality of life
they wish to achieve, rather than have this chosen for them.”
Fiona Sandford, chief executive of Visibility, added: “This is
a pioneering technique that will transform the lives of young
blind children.
“We have trained four visually impaired adults and they are
now using their skills to train children. We hope to roll this
out to adults. I have seen it being used and it works.”
Belgium’s federal police use a unit of blind officers
specifically for their acute sense of hearing, in analysing
phone taps and bugged conversations in investigations of
terrorism, drug trafficking and organised crime.
The detectives can separate the voices of different speakers
and pick up sonic clues such as whether a suspect is in a
railway station or a restaurant or whether the caller is using
a land-line or mobile phone. Some officers have even
identified the make of car suspects are using.
A detective in Antwerp, Sacha van Loo, 36, who is trained in
echolocation, correctly identified a drug smuggler as Albanian
from his accent when sighted colleagues thought the man was
Moroccan.
Hollywood has also depicted the heightened senses of the
blind. In the 2003 film Dare-devil, Ben Affleck plays a New
York lawyer, blinded in childhood, who transforms himself into
a masked crime-busting superhero by night, using his acute
hearing as a “radar sense” to “see” through the dark.
Source URL:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article3341739.ece
----------
To send a message to the list, send any message to blindza@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
----------
To unsubscribe from this list, send a message to blindza-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
with 'unsubscribe' in the subject line
---
The 'homepage' for this list is at http://www.blindza.co.za
Other related posts:
- » [blindza] Fw: Re: Blind children taught to see the world like bats
