Voices: Nathan and Daniel Kish on Self-Determination
About this recording
The companion piece to Lesson 7. Nathan sits down with Daniel Kish — near the spots where the lessons were recorded — and interviews him about self-determination. Daniel lays out the framework he uses with students, which he calls ACTS: Adaptations, Capacity building, Technology, and Supports. Then the interview turns around: Daniel asks Nathan what the hardest thing he ever had to learn was, and Nathan’s answer — learning how to talk to people and make friends — is the most honest moment in the course.
This is a real family recording. There are retakes, a stubborn case of the hiccups, and a text message from a friend in the middle. It’s all left in the transcript, because that’s how it happened.
Listen for
- The ACTS framework: Adaptations (marked measuring cups, labeled appliances — or none at all), Capacity building (flash sonar, cane skills, musicianship, strength), Technology (GPS, AI scene analysis), and Supports (the people — and intelligences — who help).
- Why Daniel prefers “self-determination” to “independence” — the same distinction Nathan draws on his walk.
- Reciprocity: support goes both ways — receiving it and giving it.
- “The more we can accomplish, the more people take us seriously — as people.”
- Nathan on friendship, conversation practice, group chats, and analyzing recordings of his own conversations and music on his braille display.
Transcript
Lightly edited for readability. False starts and retakes are summarized in brackets.
[Recording check. Take one begins, but is interrupted — Nathan has the hiccups, and the crew spends a few minutes trying every cure they know: scaring them away, holding his breath for a count of thirty (the counting includes a “tickle,” which doesn’t help), and waiting them out. Daniel checks a text message. Take three begins.]
Nathan: Hey everyone. I’m Nathan, and I’m here with Daniel — the great Daniel Kish. Daniel is the legend of blind navigation. You’ve probably heard of him in videos and media pieces, doing cool stuff with echolocation. He’s also had the time to teach many thousands of students. What would you say students usually try to do when they first start learning about self-determination?
Daniel: First of all, I did not expect Nathan to introduce me that way — so thank you, Nathan. Let’s see. Self-determination really depends on the person, because self-determination is about doing what you want, when you want, how you want — in a responsible, conscientious way, hopefully. I break that down into four elements: adaptations, capacity building, technology, and supports.
Daniel: Adaptations — what adaptations do we use in our environment, if any? Some blind people have kitchens full of gadgets and markings all over their appliances; others have little, if any. I personally don’t have many real adaptations — I do have measuring cups that are marked, but I marked those myself, and my brother and sister-in-law have marked their microwave.
Daniel: Capacity building — what capabilities do we like to develop? Flash sonar could be one. Your cane skills. Your hearing. Your musicianship. Your health, your physical strength and stamina. Anything within you that we build to improve on ourselves is capacity building.
Nathan: I talked about that in the previous recording — trying to build certain things about yourself, and growing your skill in what you’re doing and what you want to be known for as a blind person.
Daniel: Right. Basically: the more we’re able to do, the more people take us seriously — as people. And I don’t just mean one particular thing. I don’t mean how strong you are, or whether you can see or walk or use your hands. I mean: the more you can accomplish, however you find it valuable to do that, the more people take us seriously. That’s capacity building. Our hiking, for example — we built the capacity of balance, of knowing where we’re going, of navigating rugged terrain.
Daniel: Then technology — a lot of people dive right into technology to find out more about their surroundings and who’s around them, and to connect with them. There are all kinds of technologies for that now: really good GPS, excellent AI scene analysis, mapping technologies.
Daniel: And finally, supports — how we engage our support. Nathan talked about this on the hike as well: we like to think of our freedom in terms of self-determination rather than independence, because self-determination incorporates a wider range of how we get things done.
Nathan: Independence is one thing — yes, there are things you can do on your own, but it’s definitely not going to be everything. You’re going to need people around you to help with certain things.
Daniel: It can be people, it can be human intelligence or artificial intelligence — but people definitely play their part in helping us achieve more, more easily, and more rewardingly: we achieve with others rather than outside of others, or against others. So I call it the ACTS framework: Adaptations, Capacity, Technology, Supports. When people first start to self-determine, it takes all those forms. Many dive into technology; some build capacity; others lean on support mechanisms — not only receiving support but giving it. We think of support as a giving-and-receiving process. Reciprocity. Support goes both ways.
Nathan: And the idea is — the more you can do, the more use you are in society, as people are able to view you by what you can do rather than what they see on the surface. People don’t like to admit it, but everyone judges a book by its cover, because that’s all they can see at first.
Daniel: So — I have a question for you. What do you think was one of the hardest things you’ve had to learn to accomplish, and how did you go about becoming able to do it?
Nathan: The hardest thing, I think, was more of a realization: how to talk to other people. Like I said in the recording on the hike, I got friends later in life than most people do. Being newer to it, I had trouble knowing what to say or do with friends, or how we’d do things together. As I started talking to my friends about it, I’d ask them questions about how it works — and even when they didn’t have the answer, they could give me a good idea so I could come up with an answer on my own.
Daniel: So you engaged support to learn how to socialize — you had people help you develop those skills. Did you use any other factor — capacity, or technology?
Nathan: For capacity, it was developing my conversational skills as an individual — coming up with things I wanted to say, what to do in a given situation. For technology, I talk with my friends in chats — Messages, Facebook Messenger, Instagram. I recently started using Discord — honestly, I hate Discord, but it’s a good way of engaging with my friends online. I don’t have online-only friends; anybody I’m friends with in real life, I usually have added online too.
Daniel: Have you found Discord difficult from a blind accessibility standpoint?
Nathan: Sort of. It’s just annoying to use, and the messaging system works differently from more common apps.
Daniel: You told me once that you also took to recording conversations and analyzing the recordings?
Nathan: That was more when I was younger. Sitting in a group or in class, I could just hit record on my braille display and listen back. As I got older I did that less — but I kept it on for my music classes, where I could analyze conversations I’d had, and also my playing: listening to how I sound and thinking about what I can do about it.
Daniel: I think we should probably wrap up, so we don’t keep Elijah standing there all day with the camera. Anything else you want to add?
Nathan: Again — as iron sharpens iron, a friend sharpens a friend. So try to get friends. It might not be easy at first, especially if you haven’t done it before. But that’s one of the bigger things I see among blind kids: they don’t have as many friends. Go change that.
[They review the recording, joke about inviting themselves to dinner somewhere in the neighborhood, and remember they should ask Dad to start dinner. Recording ends.]