The Boy Who Sees with Sound

The Boy Who Sees with Sound

Blind
since age 3, Ben Underwood skateboards, shoots hoops and plays video
games. How does he do it? Just like bats and dolphins

FRIDAY JULY 14, 2006 06:00AM EST

"I'm a normal kid," says Ben, who lost his sight at 3. (above, he inspects his prosthetic eyes.) Photo by: Theo Rigby

There was the time a fifth grader thought it would be funny to punch
the blind kid and run. So he snuck up on Ben Underwood and hit him in
the face. That's when Ben started his clicking thing. "I chased him,
clicking until I got to him, then I socked him a good one," says Ben, a
skinny 14-year-old. "He didn't reckon on me going after him. But I can
hear walls, parked cars, you name it. I'm a master at this game."

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Watch Ben Underwood use echolocation to connect with dolphins

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Ask people about Ben Underwood and you'll hear dozens of stories like
this – about the amazing boy who doesn't seem to know he's blind.
There's Ben zooming around on his skateboard outside his home in
Sacramento; there he is playing kickball with his buddies. To see him
speed down hallways and make sharp turns around corners is to observe a
typical teen – except, that is, for the clicking. Completely
blind since the age of 3, after retinal cancer claimed both his eyes
(he now
wears two prostheses), Ben has learned to perceive and locate objects
by making a steady stream of sounds with his tongue, then listening for
the echoes as they bounce off the surfaces around him. About as loud as
the snapping of fingers, Ben's clicks tell him what's ahead: the echoes
they produce can be soft (indicating metals), dense (wood) or sharp
(glass). Judging by how loud or faint they are, Ben has learned to
gauge distances.


The technique is called echolocation, and many species, most
notably bats and dolphins, use it to get around. But a 14-year-old boy
from Sacramento? While many blind people listen for echoes to some
degree, Ben's ability to navigate in his sightless world is, say
experts, extraordinary. "His skills are rare," says Dan Kish, a blind
psychologist and leading teacher of echomobility among the blind. "Ben
pushes the limits of human perception."


Kish has taught echolocation to scores of blind people as a
supplement to more traditional methods, such as walking with a cane or
a guide dog, but only a handful of people in the world use echolocation
alone to get around, according to the American Foundation for the
Blind. A big part of the reason Ben has succeeded is his mother, who
made the decision long ago never to coddle her son. "I always told him,
'Your name is Benjamin Underwood, and you can do anything,' " says
Aquanetta Gordon, 42, a utilities-company employee. "He can learn to
fly an airplane if he wants to."