EchoRead Programme: Learning echolocation skills through self-paced professional development during the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

Echolocation is used by people with low vision or blindness to support their navigation. Internationally, Orientation and Mobility (O&M) Specialists have learned echolocation skills and how to teach them to clients, through formal workshops with a subject matter expert. However, COVID-19 has limited access to these in-person professional development opportunities. This study investigated whether an O&M professional could learn echolocation skills in a self-paced programme with only the support of a lay assistant. We developed the EchoRead Programme to equip an individual O&M Specialist to learn basic echolocation skills in 4 hours. This auto-ethnographical perspective describes how the draft programme was trialled by one trainee O&M Specialist in her home and local neighbourhood. She developed sufficient skills to complete most of the seated, standing, and walking tasks in the programme, but needed more support developing tongue-clicking and recognising driveways when shorelining fences. She found it was important to use learning environments that were graduated in physical and audio complexity. The EchoRead Programme was then trialled and revised by an experienced O&M Specialist, beginning at home, then exploring a range of venues available within a 5 km radius – the roaming range allowed during COVID lockdown. The resulting EchoRead Programme can equip O&M professionals to be self-directed in learning early echolocation skills, using online and locally available resources. This programme could be especially useful for vision professionals and their clients, who have limited access to in-person learning opportunities with colleagues or peers because of geographical isolation, low resources, or a global pandemic.

Introduction

Observers have long been curious about the way that many people with ultra-low vision or blindness can navigate confidently around obstacles and travel fluently with few collisions. Echolocation in orientation and mobility (O&M) involves detecting objects using reflected sound to get spatial information from the environment to inform navigation (Thaler et al., 2019). Listening for echolocation is different to listening for source sounds. For example, a lawn-mower produces a sound that might reflect (echo) off a brick wall alerting the traveller to the location of the wall, although the wall itself makes no sound (Deverell & Taylor, 2009). Echolocation, also known as echoidentification (Baguhn & Anderson, 2018), is now included in the body of knowledge required for professional certification of O&M Specialists (Academy for Certification of Vision Rehabilitation and Education Professionals, 2018). Accordingly, echolocation is also being built into the curriculum of O&M qualifications for personnel preparation.

In the 1990s, Daniel Kish, a blind O&M Specialist from the United States and pioneer in the echolocation field, devised ways to teach echolocation skills to blind travellers and O&M Specialists. He drew a helpful distinction between passive echolocation and active echolocation (Kish, 2011). Passive echolocation is the use of existing sounds, such as traffic noise or footsteps, already echoing around the traveller’s surroundings. Active echolocation involves producing a controlled sound such as tongue-clicking, to generate resulting echoes as needed, to explore or navigate an environment (Baguhn & Anderson, 2018). Kish (2011) refers to this active generation of sound as ‘flash sonar’.

Since 2000, Kish has visited over 40 countries, teaching flash sonar and echolocation skills to people who are blind, their families, and professionals in the blind and low vision sector (Visioneers, 2019). His 2-3 day workshops combine a masterclass with practicum – Kish demonstrates how he teaches flash sonar to a blind learner, working through increasingly challenging practice tasks. Then, workshop participants work individually and together to develop flash sonar techniques and practise their own echolocation skills under the supervision of an expert.

Kish’s workshops seem to have re-ignited research interest in echolocation, and studies have evolved from investigating simple object detection to measuring distance, direction, size, shape, and the material properties of objects being detected (Thaler & Goodale, 2016). Neurological investigations have demonstrated that the visual cortex, not just the auditory centre of early and late-blind people, is involved in processing auditory information for echolocation (Thaler et al., 2011) and the visual cortex seems to be recruited to this purpose in echolocation experts (Thaler et al., 2014). These studies support an increasing body of evidence about neural plasticity and the multivalent nature of areas of the brain that were previously thought to be singular in their sensory processing.

There are studies exploring the advantages of using echolocation. In 2008, Brazier interviewed 10 regular echolocators and found that echolocation is a highly effective skill to detect, locate, avoid, and negotiate objects in the environment. It provides a method to shoreline and maintain orientation, and to extend the participants’ range of travel into different and less familiar environments. However, she cautioned O&M professionals to consider a learner’s personal preference for sound generation when teaching echolocation, and not assume that above-the-waist sounds (finger snapping, clapping, or tongue-clicking) will be more beneficial than sounds generated below the waist (thigh-slapping, footsteps, or cane-tapping). Her Australian participants preferred using passive echolocation from cane-tapping, rather than using active tongue clicks or finger clicks, because they considered the cane was less conspicuous, more natural, and less likely to draw unwanted attention.

Echolocation combines well with a long cane to support travel (Thaler, 2013). People with little or no vision often use some form of echolocation before undertaking any formal echolocation training, such as tuning into the sound of a cane tip reflecting off a wall to help walk parallel to the wall without needing to maintain physical contact (Baguhn & Anderson, 2018). Adjusting the intensity and frequency of tongue-clicking can improve acuity for surfaces that reflect sound weakly (Thaler et al., 2019). With plenty of practice, echolocation experts walk just as quickly as sighted people and much more fluently than echolocation beginners, with less collisions at head level (Thaler et al., 2020). These benefits of echolocation are not limited to blind travellers – sighted people are also able to improve their echolocation ability (Ekkel et al., 2017).

In the past two decades, Kish (2011) has analysed and modelled how best to teach echolocation skills, rather than leaving the development of echolocation skills to chance. Kish’s first echolocation book includes research, case studies, graduated instructional approaches, and practice exercises that can lead to the mastery of echolocation skills (Kish & Hook, 2016). Kish advises that a beginner learning flash sonar might need to practise tongue-clicking to achieve a sharp click, similar to a snap of the fingers or the pop of chewing gum. They should start seated with their eyes closed and have someone hold a small bowl or open box in front of their face to hear how the sound of their own voice differs when the object is held in front, then at either side. Then the learner can use information about the environment gained from flash sonar and cane-tapping while walking.

Kish’s workshops ignited interest in teaching echolocation in Australia (Brazier, 2008; Holmes, 2011), Sweden (Berndtsson & Sunneson, 2012), The Netherlands (Ekkel et al., 2017), Poland (Miler-Zdanowska, 2019), the United States (Baguhn & Anderson, 2018), and the United Kingdom (Norman et al., 2021). Holmes suggested that a holistic echolocation programme would help pave the way for O&M professionals to teach echolocation to clients. She presented a wide range of activities and resources for O&M professionals to use in developing training programmes, and like Kish, she proposed starting with simple tasks, then moving to more complex tasks and environments.

In Sweden, Berndtsson and Sunneson (2012) recommended that student O&M Specialists learn echolocation theory and practice as part of initial training. They created their echolocation training package from Holmes’ work, including four lectures, theory, and practice, delivered over 2 days by expert echolocators.

Baguhn and Anderson (2018) found that basic echolocation skills can be taught in only a few hours. They considered that O&M instructors should teach echolocation to their clients to use in conjunction with a long cane, and suggested that the teaching sequence is important. For example, if the learner already uses passive echolocation, they should build on this experience first before teaching flash sonar and adding active echolocation skills. When the learner can make clear, crisp tongue-clicking sounds, it is possible to move on to different surfaces.

Miler-Zdanowska (2019) promoted echolocation training for O&M professionals so they can pass this training on to clients, and also address a lack of understanding of echolocation by sighted people in Poland.

Norman et al. (2021) researched click-based echolocation, comparing blind participants (n = 12) who were experts, and sighted (n = 14) participants who completed a 10-week training process to determine if being blind improved their click-based echolocation. This study found that using a click-based or above-the-waist sound method may not be as popular as cane-tapping but can improve a sighted person’s echolocation ability by providing clear echoes. This is good news for sighted trainee O&M Specialists.

Kish now works with a US-based team of Visioneers (2019) offering an international certification course in flash sonar echolocation and full-length perception-cane instructional training. This learning is typically available face to face, with plenty of opportunities to practise and embody echolocation skills, supervised by experts. However, geographical isolation can limit access to such valuable learning. The COVID-19 pandemic has compounded this problem of isolation, curtailing international travel and restricting in-person access to local and international subject matter experts.

In the context of O&M personnel preparation, although much curriculum content has been shifted online or delivered through tele-practice, there is still substantial tacit, embodied O&M knowledge that is best learned through lived experience (Mettler, 2008). The O&M profession has had to explore alternative methods to manage the practical elements of O&M personnel preparation as well as new service models to teach O&M skills to clients. This rapid change in global dynamics and O&M learning methods has prompted the questions addressed in this study: Can an O&M professional learn echolocation skills independently in a self-paced programme, and what is involved in such a programme?

Methods

The EchoRead Programme was developed in a region of the world where there is a perpetual shortage of O&M professionals (Deverell & Scott, 2014). Our study involved collaboration between a trainee and experienced O&M Specialist located in different countries to transform a subjective experience into constructivist knowledge about learning echolocation that can be further built upon by others.

Participants and methodology

The trainee O&M Specialist (aged 30, in New Zealand) and the Certified O&M Specialist/experienced supervisor (age 54, in Australia) were working together through weekly zoom sessions, email, and revision of assignment work using track-changes in Word documents. COVID restrictions meant that the trainee was working from home with limited physical access to peers, O&M professionals, clients, and the usual opportunities trainees have to learn tacit embodied O&M skills within a supportive group. The trainee needed to undertake a 3-month research project and was interested in echolocation.

Given the limitations of time and COVID isolation, we chose analytic autoethnography as a methodology for reporting and then examining an individual’s embodied knowledge through ‘explicit and reflexive self-observation’ with the purpose of ‘improving theoretical understandings of broader social phenomena’ (Anderson, 2006, p. 375). This methodology helps to address the perpetual problem of describing tacit O&M knowledge (Mettler, 2008).

Developing and testing the EchoRead Programme

The trainee scoped the literature, developed the goals for the EchoRead Programme, and framed the programme content within a template provided by the supervisor. The EchoRead Programme manual (see Supplemental Appendix) includes aims of the programme, guidelines for venue selection and preparation, links to YouTube videos that demonstrate effective echolocation skills and tongue-clicking, a checklist of resources needed, guidelines for training the assistant, instructions for graduated echolocation activities, self-assessment questions, and suggestions for follow-up activities. The programme provides an opportunity to compare different flash sonar methods; training resources used in the seated activities (Figure 1) to see which was easier to locate; inside and outdoor environments; the impact of different background noises on echolocation; and the differing challenges of sitting, standing, and moving activities.

Figure 1.

Metal bowl, glass platter, and pillow used in Seated Activity 1.

Two days before the 4 hour workshop, the participant started learning tongue-clicking by watching different echolocation videos online and practising at home. Then the self-paced echolocation workshop was completed on a Saturday in July 2021. The programme was conducted in the participant’s home and local area, with easy access to familiar resources and the help of a lay assistant who had no O&M experience or training in echolocation. The assistant facilitated object placement in the seated activities, provided some guiding when moving between locations or randomising starting places for outdoor echolocation activities, and took notes while the participant was blindfolded. The participant used a long cane to move safely and independently outside where there were changes in ground-plane.

After the 4 hour workshop, the trainee analysed the programme independently, working through her self-interview responses using a SWOT matrix (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) to support her initial evaluation before discussing the SWOT analysis with the supervisor to identify beneficial improvements to the programme. There was clarification but no acrimony, and the manual was amended accordingly.

Member checking

Next, the supervisor worked from the revised manual to create a teaching video illustrating the EchoRead Programme for students enrolled in another O&M personnel preparation programme. This video creation involved testing the sequence of training activities in the manual while exploring local training venues available in a 5 km radius from home (the roaming range allowed in COVID lockdown). Photographs of the original training venues in New Zealand provided by the trainee helped the supervisor to locate parallel environments in Australia and supported discussions about sequencing training venues using the O&M Environmental Complexity Scale (Deverell, 2011), as well as discussions about managing safety.

This member-checking collaboration informed further refinement of the programme manual. Unfortunately, the resulting video is not available for public access, being the intellectual property of another institution.

Data collection and analysis

Data streams included handwritten notes on an activity checklist, memos written by the trainee, self-interview questions completed after each phase of the training (see the EchoRead Programme manual), and photos. After the training programme was completed, the participant transcribed handwritten notes into a table in Microsoft Word and completed the SWOT analysis before writing an autoethnographic narrative to account for the experience and its results.

Results

This project resulted in two outcomes: (1) an autoethnographic narrative that includes an evaluation of the initial testing of the EchoRead Programme (see below) and (2) the revised EchoRead Programme manual that resulted from member-checking (see Supplemental Appendix).

Autoethnographic narrative

When choosing to learn echolocation independently, starting with tongue-clicking, I struggled to find appropriate videos with clear instructions on how to make the correct sound. A lot of the videos focused on the benefit of echolocation and not the description of how to make the sound. The video I found the most helpful was where the teacher described the sound as starting the tongue from the top of the mouth and going down in one movement. Before this, I created the tongue-clicking sound by moving my tongue from the bottom of my mouth upwards. I found that many of the videos were men, and I wanted to hear women using tongue-clicking. I didn’t know if I was clicking loud enough, sharp enough, or clear enough. The clicks were not always consistent, and I needed to drink a lot of water during the process.

Setting up

My assistant for the echolocation training programme was my husband, who has minimal experience with blindness, low vision, or O&M. I chose my husband for convenience. I wanted to see if I could learn echolocation in the home environment without the help of another O&M Specialist. I set him up in the dining room of our house with all the objects for the seated phase laid out on the table within reach. The objects included a concave bowl, a glass plate, a cork placemat, and a soft textured pillow. I gave him a checklist to record the information gathered, including the distances that the objects were detected. Before starting, I went through the instructions for him to follow, including the seated, standing, and moving phases. I also went over why I used each object and what I hoped to gain from it. I then informed him that he needed to be as quiet as possible to ensure I could not hear him or the object move; if I did hear it, I would tell him, and we would start again.

Learning echolocation skills

In the seated phase, I was able to locate all the objects (concave bowl, glass plate, cork board, and soft pillow) using echolocation at approximately 20 cm from my face. The easiest object to locate was the bowl, and I used a mixture of shhhing and clicking sounds. I struggled the most with the pillow. I could not find the pillow with clicking to start with, so I used shhhing sound to find it. I struggled to tell the difference between the glass plate and the cork board. However, I was able to determine the bowl quickly. I occasionally heard my husband move around, especially when he picked up different objects, so we had to stop and start again with these seated activities.

During this phase, I struggled with the consistency of my clicking. It took me multiple clicks to find the object, and I often doubted myself. When I found myself starting to guess, I would stop and start again, and I wouldn’t state where the object was until I heard the echo back and was confident that I’d got it right. When I got it wrong, I asked him to move the item around to start again. I also had to stop and turn the heat pump off during this phase as I found the noise distracting.

Once the seated phase was complete, I took off my blindfold and answered the first questionnaire before moving on to the standing and moving activities. On reflection, I found that the objects I chose sampled a good range of surface textures, and they were all easily accessible from home. I realised that the shhhing sound was easier to find and hear the echo back, but it was more difficult to keep it going consistently.

After the seated section was complete, I went over with my assistant how to guide me safely before moving on to the standing and moving section. In the standing and moving sections, the objects I was aiming to locate were a metal shed, plaster/brick pole, corner of a brick house, front door, lamppost, and side of a large car. I was also aiming to shoreline the fence alongside the footpath and find the driveway opening.

I completed the standing and moving activities before stopping to fill out the questionnaire, as it was easier to keep the blindfold on when outside. I worked in my own driveway, a neighbour’s driveway, my backyard, and up and down the street (Figure 2). I identified and located a brick/plaster pole, lamppost, the corner and side of a brick house, the side of a metal shed, a front door (moving and standing), and the side of a large SUV car. I struggled to locate a house from the footpath, and I could not use echolocation to shoreline along the footpath and find the start of the driveway.

Figure 2.

Practising echolocation in three phases – sitting and listening for a bowl, standing and listening for a shed corner, then walking up to a car.

I found the street environment difficult to work in. I choose my home environment for convenience, but most houses didn’t have fences to reflect the sound and I didn’t factor in how busy it would be on a Saturday morning. Outside, I was interrupted by the sound of traffic, people mowing their lawns, and walking past. It would have been better to choose a quieter location with fences or houses closer to the footpath. In the standing and moving sections, I was using a roller tip on my long cane, and the noise of the tip rolling interrupted my focus when listening for other echoes. Outside, I found I needed to be close to objects to detect them using tongue-clicking so I don’t think flash sonar extended my range of preview any more than the passive echoes available from my long cane use.

Evaluation

In evaluating the programme, I liked the way that the activities started out simple, and then increased in complexity. This allowed me to practise the techniques on easily found objects like the concave bowl before moving on to more complex tasks like finding a pole or metal shed. It was convenient to use objects easily found in the home – a mixing bowl and a serving platter. The standing and moving activities also included objects that others are likely to find in the home or around the local community – a metal shed in the backyard of my house, a lamppost and street signs found in the street, and the outside corner of my house.

While the location and venue were readily accessible, I wondered whether choosing a quieter or more controlled venue may have helped me use echolocation skills outside better. When I was outside completing the standing and moving activities, it got very noisy, and I had to stop often to wait for cars to pass. I believe it would have been easier to use echolocation to shoreline and find a driveway opening if there were larger or closer buildings to echolocate against instead of houses or fences. An industrial area or business park might have been quieter with fewer people around on weekends (Figure 3).

Figure 3.

Street views in Australia (a, b) and New Zealand (c), with varying shorelines and surfaces for echolocating – a hedge, a high timber fence, poles, driveway openings, and intermittent parked vehicles.

Several issues arose that are worth considering if doing this programme again. My assistant needed to move around easily and quickly to help me with the seated activities, so choosing a physically agile assistant is important. Using my own home, I knew the spatial layout so there was less need to rely on echolocation feedback because I have already memorised where objects are located. If participants do not have suitable areas in their community (e.g., quiet, large open spaces) with the right kind of echolocation challenge, they might struggle and give up more easily, so choosing the right location is important.

I thought the O&M Environmental Complexity Scale (Deverell, 2011) could help in choosing different locations, from quiet and simple to busy and complex. It would also be easier to work from larger to smaller objects, such as locating a truck before moving on to a car. I wondered if using a clicker device in this programme instead of tongue-clicking would have made it easier to hear the returning echoes since I found tongue-clicking frustrating.

Discussion

This study aimed first to discover if an O&M professional can learn echolocation skills in a self-paced programme and then identify factors that need to be considered in programme design. The participant, a trainee O&M Specialist, was able to learn basic echolocation skills in 4 hours, but needed more time to refine some skills, including tongue-clicking and shorelining.

Kish’s echolocation workshops usually go for 2–3 days, with support in learning to make flash sonar sounds before using echolocation to locate objects. Our participant’s struggle to learn tongue-clicking flagged the need for clearer video resources, or live video support from an expert echolocator to enable this learning. Kish (2011) stated that not everyone will learn the tongue clicks easily but the shhhing sound might work. Our participant found the shhhing sound was helpful, but difficult to maintain when walking around.

Baguhn and Anderson (2018) discussed the importance of the teaching sequence. Our participant found that learning a range of flash sonar methods first provided an essential foundation for echolocating with indoor, seated activities where she could control the sounds and environment. She needed to turn off any ambient noise inside and block out traffic and pedestrian noise outside to focus her listening on the returning echoes. After some successes with echolocating portable objects, it was easy to move to the standing and moving phases of the programme. Working incrementally from simple to complex challenges helped our participant to gain confidence and provided motivation to continue. With practice, she could echolocate smaller objects at longer distances, which accords with the findings of Tonelli et al. (2016).

Implications for professional O&M practice

Our study confirmed that a novice can learn basic echolocation skills in just a few hours. The difference between the Baguhn and Anderson (2018) study and ours is that the EchoRead Programme is self-directed learning supported by a layperson, rather than guided discovery learning supervised by an expert. This distinction is important given that the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in fewer opportunities for echolocation training to be delivered by itinerant experts, and this problem seems unlikely to resolve quickly.

Since COVID-19, O&M professionals have diversified their delivery of O&M client services and university O&M curricula using tele-practice and assistive technologies. However, tele-practice is no substitute for embodied learning and context-specific practice of O&M skills. There are also O&M professionals who live and work in isolated geographical areas without easy access to professional development, who could begin learning and then share echolocation skills using the EchoRead Programme.

Limitations

The EchoRead Programme is only intended to provide a structured introduction to practical echolocation skills, not produce echolocation experts in 4 hours. We expect those who use the programme independently will need to work with an expert to refine their echolocation skills as the opportunity allows.

Starting to learn tongue-clicking only 2 days before the workshop was not sufficient time for our participant to become proficient. Beginning this preliminary step earlier seems worthwhile, allowing more time to practise before undertaking the workshop activities.

Although this self-paced programme is designed for independent learning, it is dependent on good Internet access to observe examples of echolocation in practice and learn the flash sonar sounds. Success of the programme also depends on the support of an agile lay volunteer during the workshop, who can follow instructions, move with stealth, and keep notes.

Finally, using local neighbourhoods to practise echolocation is convenient, but these areas might be too noisy to support graduated development of skills, and the participant might need to search for quieter learning environments further afield.

Further research

The EchoRead Programme has now been included in the curriculum of a new university O&M qualification, without adding substantially to the teaching load. Learning is supported by an instructional video that models application of the EchoRead activities in local environments. The programme offers trainees an opportunity to begin learning echolocation skills at their own pace, providing a greater awareness of the soundscape in any travel environment as they develop other practical O&M skills. The outcomes of this curriculum pilot will be published when available, with a critical examination of the effectiveness of self-directed learning. If effective, the programme might be developed further, with extension activities in a broader range of training environments.

It also seems worth piloting the EchoRead Programme with individual clients who want to learn basic echolocation skills, and assess whether they can learn the skills independently or whether an expert is needed to support the client’s learning. This piloting could be initiated by O&M professionals with good echolocation skills who are managing isolated client programmes through tele-practice.

In selecting opportunities for O&M professional development, one consideration is cost, and the EchoRead Programme is freely available. Another is whether the programme counts for recertification points with the ACVREP-COMS programme, and some thought could be given to the kind of evidence of learning that might be generated from this semi-formal, self-paced education programme.

Conclusion

In this phenomenological study, we propose a programme for self-education in echolocation skills that might be used by trainee and qualified O&M professionals, and by O&M clients. The EchoRead Programme was trialled by one trainee O&M Specialist and refined after collaboration with another O&M Specialist with extant echolocation skills. This study has shown that a single trainee O&M Specialist can learn some basic echolocation skills independently in a 4 hour self-paced programme. Flash sonar sounds were learned and then used to identify different objects in an indoor or outdoor environment, locate and walk towards an object, stop before colliding, and potentially shoreline to locate the opening of a driveway. Furthermore, these skills were learned in the participant’s own environments, making this free programme both accessible and user-friendly. The programme was effective for one person learning at and near home in a residential suburb of a large city and so seems transferable to other such locations where Internet access and the assistance of a lay volunteer are available.