Daniel Kish

Daniel Kish is the lead founder and President of World Access for the Blind. This 501(c)(3) non-profit organization uniquely combines a self directed, no limits approach with expertise in perceptual development, positive psychology, person-centered instruction, and public education to develop and mobilize innovative, high impact strategies to facilitate self directed achievement by challenging all forms of blindness throughout the world. Daniel holds Master's degrees in both Developmental Psychology and Special Education, emphasizing perceptual development, family dynamics, and children at risk. He also holds two national certifications in Orientation and Mobility, COMS and NOMC. Daniel is the first totally blind individual to obtain both certifications. He believes in a strong interdisciplinary education model, making a point to work in close collaboration with all professionals and other supports in relation to each student. Consequently, Daniel has collaborated extensively with renowned therapists and specialists in the areas of neural science, communication, biomechanics, and perception. Given his unique combination of training, background, and associations, Daniel refers to himself as a Perceptual-Navigation Specialist, emphasizing in his instructional practice the perceptual foundations underlieing navigation and environmental interaction. Daniel has worked with nearly 1000 blind students of all ages and backgrounds, and from many cultures, as well as tens of thousands of professionals and members of the blindness community. Daniel has stayed and worked extensively with dozens of families in many countries to help them break down the barriers to realizing their children's potential to achieve a quality of life comparable to their peers. He has presented and conducted hundreds of invited presentations and workshops internationally on all topics related to human perception and blindness, including professional development trainings for top scientists, Teachers, and medical practitioners. Of particular note are his seminars on the development of the perceptual and imaging systems in the brain, how this development is disrupted by dependency conditioning, such as sighted guide and lack of early cane training, how this disruption stunts short and long term psychological and physical development, and how this disruption can be put back on track by reestablishing natural processes of self directed discovery. He has helped to establish relief projects to foster freedom of community participation of blind people in developing countries. Among other things, this has involved developing and implementing a multiphase model for training individuals, blind and sighted, to provide Perceptual-Navigation instruction to other blind people, and to mobilize public awareness campaigns to shed a more positive light on the real issues faced by blind individuals.

Helping all living things find liberation and growth.

Blind people can learn to see. Sighted people can learn to see better. The most debilitating disability is blindness to our own blindness. When we can recognize our personal form of blindness, whether it's social, psychological, or spiritual, then we can see better through the dark unknown of any challenge, and navigate through that challenge to new discoveries.

I was invited to TEDx Long Beach in 2011, and have spoken at TEDx London and Mumbai since. I was invited to TED 2015 after the NPR programs aired.

I'm a trained singer, and a good narrative writer.