“There is active resistance to blind people teaching other blind people how to be blind,” he tells me. “It’s a sort of reinforced custodialism.” Kish says that many blind children will naturally try to explore through noise. If they’re not using their tongues, they might snap their fingers or stomp their feet. But parents often see these behaviors as weird or antisocial, and put a stop to them before they can bloom into a sophisticated sonar sense.
