Paper short abstract:

Some vision impaired people learn to navigate through echolocation, or the perception of space through reflected sound. Drawing an interviews with expert echolocators, this paper explores the phenomenological, social, and interactional obstacles to refining this sensory skill and its consequences.

Paper long abstract:

Some vision impaired (VI) people learn to navigate through echolocation, or the perception of space through reflected sound. Laboratory-based research has demonstrated that perceptual acuity can be quite acute, and practical observation reveals that the sensory skills offers many advantages, and yet it is relatively rare among VI individuals. Drawing an interviews with expert echolocators, this paper explores the phenomenological, social, and interactional obstacles to refining this sensory skill as well as the consequences of its development. One of the key obstacles is that VI individuals are disproportionately mainstreamed for much of their education, rather than having extensive contact with many other VI individuals, including those who adopted sensory strategies that are likely inaccessible to sighted individuals. Unlike hearing impaired individuals, who have often developed elaborate Deaf cultures, VI individuals have been disproportionately subjected to concerns about 'blindisms,' or the idea that the specific mannerism of the VI will draw attention and stigma to them. The case of echolocation, its phenomenology and development, both demonstrate the degree to which echolocation is not like hearing, but is in some ways more like vision, and how social disability and disabling affect sensory development for a minority sensory community, like the VI. Taking a neuroanthropological approach to echolocation and its impairment among the VI, this paper discusses how sensory practices develop specific local neurologies of perception.