Documentary Description
This is the miraculous story of American teenager Ben Underwood, who
has been completely blind since the age of three when he lost both eyes
to retinal cancer. Yet, Ben zooms around on a skateboard, shoots
basketball hoops, and dodges lamp-posts and parked cars unaided. How
does Ben do all this without the use of his eyes? Incredibly, Ben has
taught himself to see with sound, using an extraordinary technique he
has created. Ben makes a sharp click with his tongue from which the
echo bounces off the object right back at him, allowing him to know
precisely where objects are located.
The technique, called ‘echo-location’, is not dissimilar to the way
a bat or dolphin uses sound to see. Ben was able to distinguish objects
with his clicking by noticing that objects ’sounded’ different. Driving
along in the car for example, Ben noticed that the side streets sounded
different to the buildings, something his family, and the scientists at
the University of California in Santa Barbara who are conducting tests
into Ben’s amazing ability, find astonishing. Seeing with sound has
transformed Ben’s life.
His mum lets him play in the street, just like all the other kids,
because his sound pictures seem to make him more aware of danger than
his sighted friends. He can even rollerblade quite easily and do chores
around the house. Ben refuses to let society label him as disabled, so
when he meets another blind man who also uses echo-location with the
extra assistance of a white cane to help him get around extra tricky
situations, Ben finds it hard to take up the use of a tool he sees as
not for him – a young boy who has relied on his own extraordinary
ability to allow him to see in his own way for so many years.
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