Flash Sonar: a new look at an old skill

By Ken Lord

The rebirth of the Orientation & Mobility Association of South Africa (OMASA) took place on the 9th, 10th and 11th of September. To mark the occasion, O&M (Orientation and Mobility) practitioners, and all those interested in any form of mobility and independence for blind people, were invited to attend a three-day workshop organised, hosted and co-sponsored by St. Dunstan's and the S.A. Guide-Dogs Association and run by OMASA at the beautiful Guide Dog Training Centre in Sandton.

As the headliner Daniel Kish, a blind American O&M Instructor, who has gained international recognition with his teaching of echo location, which he calls “Flash Sonar” and his blind team consisting of Juan Ruiz and Adam Shaible, were invited to run a two-day workshop, firstly in Johannesburg and then a similar workshop in Cape Town.

Six blind adults and six blind children were invited to participate and receive training during the workshop in Johannesburg. Continuous reference was made to “alternative perception” which Kish explained is the development and use of a blind person's full perceptual system to gain information about one's environment more completely and accurately. For visually impaired persons, this means developing one's remaining vision and non-visual perceptions to “see” without sight. Thus, the term “alternative” refers to alternate ways of “seeing” the environment. Blind people can fill their 'darkness' with dynamic images derived not from light, but from sound as well.

It is Kish's contention that sighted people use light to see and take in the information of their environment, whereas blind people can learn to use sound to sense their surroundings - much like a bat. Blind humans using flash sonar, which is much more than just echo location, can move about as though they have a crude but effective form of vision. They can be well oriented, negotiate obstacles gracefully, quickly, safely, and be extremely independent - thus enjoying a wide variety of meaningful life activities. A blind traveller can receive multi-dimensional information from distances of many meters, depending on circumstances. Echoes make information available about the nature and arrangement of objects and environmental features such as overhanging branches, walls, doorways and recesses, poles, up kerbs and steps, flower boxes, pedestrians, fire hydrants, parked or moving vehicles, trees and other foliage and much more. Echoes can give detailed information about location (where objects are), dimension (how big they are and their general shape) and density (how solid it is).

During the workshop, Kish's lectures and practical demonstrations of what he was capable of, were inspiring and it was obvious that he had totally mastered his subject over many years. Kish's philosophy in teaching his subject was that the practical lessons must, above all, be fun. For this reason, the two-day workshop was totally unstructured and various aspects of alternative perception were introduced sometimes in a higgledy-piggledy fashion.

The blind participants, with a crowd of 40-odd mobility instructors and parents observing, were taught to create and use a series of unobtrusive tongue clicks, much like those used to “gee up” a horse. Interestingly, the clicks should be done very slowly, giving time for the returning echo to be received by the blind traveller and correctly interpreted. To start with, a series of different sized boards and tea trays were placed in front, above and to the side of the participants who, sitting and using the click, had to detect the object’s position.

Lessons progressed to obstacle detection which included openings, poles, trees and vehicles. It became quite easy to detect the spaces between parked cars, but to me, the cherry on top was the ability to detect the shape and outline of a vehicle and with a little practice pronounce that it was a bakkie, passenger car or a 4X4.

St. Dunstan's hosted a similar workshop in Cape Town immediately following the Johannesburg workshop and this was attended by a large number of blind people. The venue was the impressive University of Cape Town's sports complex. This too, was highly successful and, as with the OMASA workshop, a lot of blind people were given an impressive insight into the skills of Flash Sonar.

Hopefully O&M instructors and blind people themselves will take forward what was learnt at both workshops. In the case of instructors, to introduce this into their future training of clients and in the case of those blind people who attended the workshops, to continually practice this new skill and achieve a great deal of expertise.

The Orientation & Mobility Association of South Africa and The S.A. Guide-Dogs Association for the Blind are extremely grateful to St. Dunstan's for so generously agreeing to become partners and co-sponsoring this initiative.