Seeing ability, sensing possibility

Animals like bats and dolphins can navigate by sound, using sound waves to help them find their way around their environments, light or dark. Kish - and others - say they've trained themselves to do the same thing. I was spellbound by the TV screen as small children with white canes were taught to click loudly with their tongues as they moved around a playground and clambered up a rocky hillside. Their coach and mentor insisted that, like he has, they can learn to distinguish trees, people, buildings or cars by interpreting the echo of returning sound waves.

The CNN crew took him to an unfamiliar hiking trail, and he navigated the entire route with his cane and his clicking without any mishap.

I suspect that, like massage, this is not for every unfortunate soul who loses sight. But it was heartening to see possibilities where I'd never imagined them.

China, where the population of 5 million blind people is the world's largest, is beginning to see possibilities for a disabled population that has often been kept out of sight and mind.

This year, blind candidates were allowed to take the gaokao - the tough university admissions exam - using Braille. I was also intrigued by extensive, state-of-the-art handicapped access I saw at two Beijing universities and one middle school.

Some observers say such measures are putting the cart before the horse. What good is a university exam in Braille, they say, when applicants also need a high-school diploma, and most disabled kids never get past primary school?

But even if many of the shiny new wheelchair ramps and voice-activated cross-walks, for example, are still awaiting their first use by a person with a disability at those campuses, they send a powerful message of awareness and commitment.

And opportunity - even for those who can't massage or tongue-click their way to an independent life.