A Blind Woman Gains New Freedom, Click By Click By Click : Shots – Health News : NPR

 

It’s a technique called echolocation. Bats and other animals use it to see at night. And it’s being used by an increasing number of people who are blind. They listen to how the clicking sounds they make with their tongues bounce off the world around them. It tells them a surprising amount about the world.

 

NPR’s new show about human behavior. Here, show co-host Lulu Miller tells the story of a woman who encountered some unexpected complications when she tried to learn.

 

Julee-anne, who is in her early 40s and lives near Brisbane, Australia, has been blind since birth. She first heard about echolocation when she was 38 and the mother of two boys. Up until that point, she had spent her whole life getting around unfamiliar places on someone’s arm, because she felt too nervous to go out alone with a cane or guide dog.

 

“Physically I would be like butterflies, like serious butterflies when you’re about to go on stage or do something really scary,” Julee-anne says.

 

In fact, it was her husband’s arm that made her fall in love with him. His arm literally reached out and rescued her when a careless boyfriend left her alone and terrified one night in college.

 

And Thomas Bell loved having her there. “It was quite a nice feeling, actually, to have her on my arm. It sort of brought us closer together.”

 

Julee-anne had hired Kish, who lost his sight as a toddler due to cancer and who developed the echolocation technique, to give her lessons after she heard about him on TV.

 

It was her husband’s arm that made her fall in love with him. His arm literally reached out and rescued her when a careless boyfriend left her alone and terrified one night in college.

 

Curated from A Blind Woman Gains New Freedom, Click By Click By Click : Shots – Health News : NPR