Ben Wolin and Michael Minahan’s documentary short follows Daniel Kish, who uses clicks and echos to listen his way through the world.
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🛠️
LifestyleTranscript
00:00 [MUSIC]
00:13 I want to get 3D printed eyes that glow.
00:17 Glow in the dark.
00:18 That's cool.
00:19 Like actual glowing eyes.
00:21 How would they help?
00:22 Because glow in the dark normally helps you see better in the dark?
00:26 LEDs.
00:27 LEDs inside the eyes.
00:29 LEDs.
00:30 Yeah.
00:31 All right, so I'm going to remove the right one.
00:33 I'm swiping it off.
00:35 So Nathan, I'm going to hand that to you.
00:37 There it is.
00:39 And then Ashton, you get the left one.
00:43 I'm just wiping it off for you.
00:46 And there you go.
00:54 So...
00:55 Does it feel weird with your eyes out?
00:56 Yeah, it does.
00:58 But can you blink?
00:59 Not really.
01:01 Oh, okay.
01:02 That's all I can do.
01:06 I'll take the eye.
01:07 I'll take that.
01:08 And I'll take that.
01:09 Thank you.
01:12 My hand is kind of dirty, though.
01:14 Oh, that's all right.
01:15 As long as you haven't picked your nose.
01:17 [laughs]
01:40 There's a whole dimension of experience available to the perceptive blind person.
02:00 If I click at a surface, it answers back.
02:06 It's like asking a question.
02:10 What are you and where are you?
02:16 I can get, through echolocation, a really rich, palpable, satisfying, three-dimensional, fuzzy geometry.
02:25 There's hardly a richer tapestry of sound and essence.
02:45 [clicking]
03:11 If you can learn to manage and function as a blind person, you've overcome one of the greatest challenges to befall anyone.
03:22 Echolocation leads to greater freedom.
03:38 See if you can find a high point of the ceiling. Where does it seem like it's the tallest?
03:42 Right about, eh, maybe a little more.
03:48 Yeah, there.
03:50 Okay, what does it seem like it does up there?
03:56 Man, you can't really tell if there's, like, a hole up there because it's not that clear.
04:03 Can you articulate what that sounds like?
04:08 How is this click coming back different from, say, if you were standing closer to the wall?
04:14 Because it's coming back so quickly that it's a little more in-your-face feeling.
04:19 [clicking]
04:24 Hi, I'm Daniel Kish. I'm the executive director of World Access for the Blind.
04:30 World Access for the Blind is a non-profit corporation dedicated to equalizing opportunities for the success of blind people
04:38 by providing innovative technology and strategies to enhance or replace vision.
04:49 I started working with students in 1993, nearly half my life.
04:59 It's an honor to share something fundamental, something sublime, something really seminal.
05:14 Juan was the first, really. He was my first full-time student.
05:25 Remember that one time you and I had to pretend to see when we were riding a bicycle when we got stopped by the police?
05:34 Yes, that's right. We were riding in the neighborhood, and it was late, to be fair.
05:41 It was quite late at night, and we smelled donuts, and we were looking for the donuts.
05:46 Where are the donuts? Where are the donuts?
05:48 And the donut store wasn't open. The police caught us there.
05:52 His first question was, "What were you guys doing in this parking lot, in this dark parking lot?"
05:57 So I'm thinking, "I don't know it was dark."
05:59 Yeah, we have no idea what's dark and what isn't.
06:02 I said, "We can see well enough." Yeah, and fortunately, we were able to pull it off.
06:07 We were able to pretend that we could see. That was pretty crazy.
06:12 [Clock ticking]
06:22 I think Daniel was an example of what somebody could do as a blind person.
06:30 Daniel was the answer to how.
06:34 [Music]
07:03 [Clock ticking]
07:12 You had to really do it on your own, and you had to struggle a little bit.
07:19 It was important to struggle.
07:21 [Music]
07:47 I lost my skateboard.
07:51 [Skateboard rolling]
08:06 A lot of students don't get the chance to learn to skateboard
08:10 because they're just told that you can't do that, you shouldn't do that,
08:13 we're not going to let you try this.
08:18 So you don't really think anyone tried to say you shouldn't be doing that?
08:22 Well, usually if they say you shouldn't do that, I say, "Screw you, I don't care."
08:27 Because there's no way to stop me.
08:34 [Music]
08:46 We're still back in the dark ages of cautiously designed,
08:50 cautiously implemented systems of instruction for blind folks.
08:57 That's not the way you learn echolocation.
09:04 [Music]
09:33 It's really quite simple.
09:35 You learn from the people that have that similar experience, right?
09:40 You don't send a mechanic to a mathematician to go learn about cars, right?
09:45 So when it comes to blindness skills,
09:50 you want to learn from the blind people that have mastered those skills already.
09:57 And people who are sighted cannot master those skills. It's just not possible.
10:03 Doesn't make sense.
10:05 Sighted people are deemed most appropriate to teach blind people how to be blind.
10:18 It's hard for me to characterize the last 25 years or so.
10:28 There's a personal toll. There are sacrifices.
10:33 Tired.
10:36 Tired.
10:38 Hopeful, but tired.
11:03 There's a parallel universe somewhere where I'm not doing this at all. I'm on stage.
11:08 [Music]
11:28 Here we stand all together, face to face and arm and arm.
11:33 Here we stand upon the threshold of a dream.
11:38 No more outcasts, no denials, no restraint to liberty.
11:43 It's a powerful idea and I know its time has come.
11:50 I want to live. I want to grow. I want to see. I want to know.
11:55 I want to share what I can give. I want to be.
12:00 I want to live.
12:13 We all want to live.
12:27 I did not want to be a starving artist.
12:31 So I became a starving instructor instead.
12:58 [Music]
13:21 Yeah, gotta give him a new name.
13:25 I don't know. They called me little Daniel for a long time.
13:28 Ever. Yeah.
13:30 Danny.
13:31 Danny. You know what? They didn't call me Danny that much.
13:34 No.
13:38 Daniel has been a, definitely a mentor.
13:43 He's also known as Uncle Daniel.
13:47 To everyone.
13:48 To everybody.
13:50 But, you know, it's kind of difficult to say, but sometimes even closer to a father.
14:13 Doors aren't open to blind kids in this society, almost any society.
14:19 The doors are shut, barred, locked.
14:23 You have to kick down that door because we've spent millennia being kept in the dark.
14:31 [Music]
14:52 It makes a teacher proud.
15:21 [Music]
15:50 [Music]
16:00 [Music]
16:10 [Music]
16:20 [Music]
16:30 [Music]
16:50 [Music]
17:10 [Music]