Toward a Science of Consciousness

Apr 9-14, 2012

PLENARY

 Daniel Kish

For the past 15 years, Daniel Kish, CEO of World Access for the Blind, has been challenging the blindness rehabilitation
establishment, the hallowed halls of academia, and the scientific and research community to break through previously immovable barriers of widely held misconceptions about blindness, other disabilities, and about the very capacities of human perception.  With advanced degrees in Developmental Psychology and Special Education, Daniel holds both Certified Orientation & Mobility Specialist (COMS) and National Orientation & Mobility Certifications (NOMC), the first ever blind professional to achieve this duel credential.

Working through his unique interdisciplinary approach of collaborating with families, school districts, rehabilitation agencies, and experts specializing in neural science and perception, Daniel has positively impacted the lives of countless children who are deaf-blind, on the autistic spectrum, and those with sensory integration disorders to attain self directed mobility towards high achievement.
Though his expertise emphasizes the full range of development of human perception in blind people, he is most widely known for his work in echolocation.  

Through in-depth collaboration with noted scientists and perception experts, Kish has conducted pilot research, completed the most comprehensive literature reviews, and created the first systematic curriculum for advanced training to challenge the
conventional understanding of the use of echolocation in blind individuals.  From this research and thousands of hours experience
with students of all ages and abilities, the term "FlashSonar" was coined.  Kish and some of his students combined FlashSonar with other alternative techniques to apply them to independent urban and mountain bicycling, skating, ball playing, and solo wilderness expeditions. Daniel's work has positioned him on the cutting edge of technological advances in artificial vision systems on the immediate horizon, having conducted more than a hundred public seminars, university faculty workshops, and professional development trainings on topics ranging from development of perceptual and imaging systems in the brain, to
how dependency conditioning such as sighted guide and lack of early cane training stunts short and long term psychological and physical development, to how this disruption can be remediated by reestablishing natural processes of self directed exploration.

Daniel seeks to lay the ground work for collaborative cooperation among top scientists, perception experts, blind rehabilitation agencies, and sources of funding toward the development of a focused consortium to design and apply consumer
based technologies and strategies to enhance the brain's ability to perceive and function in the world at large, which will set an
important scientific basis for changing what it means to be blind.