Pro-Tactile ASL

What would your life be like if you were both blind and deaf? How would you communicate with others, form relationships, maintain a job, and navigate life in a world without sight or sound? You might be fearful, struggling to understand your surroundings and your place in them, or you might feel disengaged and isolated, unable to connect with family and friends that you can’t see or hear. If no one is touching you, you are essentially alone. Members of the DeafBlind community tackle the issues related to multi-sensory loss, survive, and thrive in a world using the strong intuition of touch and tactile communication. In honor of National Deaf History Month (March 13 - April 15), I want to share information with you about the uncommon but groundbreaking language of Pro-Tactile American Sign Language (PTASL), the language of the DeafBlind.

In the United States, 70,000 to 100,000 people qualify as DeafBlind, having severe vision and hearing loss that impacts communication, orientation, and mobility. Some people are born DeafBlind due to certain syndromes, prematurity, or other congenital causes, and others lose their vision or hearing later in life, possibly through stroke, head trauma, or illness. DeafBlindness is a spectrum, so individuals may have some residual hearing and vision, but all require unique approaches to accessibility and education to address their unique sensory profiles.

In the hearing and sighted world, a person’s senses expand outwards through their vision and hearing. The world extends as far as the eye can see and ears can hear. In comparison, the world of a DeafBlind person is incredibly narrow, expanding only as far as their fingers can reach. Because their world is explored primarily through the sense of touch, spoken and signed languages are inaccessible on their own. Language can be “touched” through Braille, a series of raised dots that represent letters of the alphabet, but Braille keyboards can be cumbersome for communication between DeafBlind individuals. American Sign Language (ASL) can also be accessed through touch by fingerspelling into the palm of the Deafblind individual (à la Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan) or having them place their hands on the hands of the signer to feel the movements of signs. However, much of ASL is visual, manipulating 3D space with handshapes, locations, and facial grammar. These features are challenging for DeafBlind people who can’t access visual information. The solution for the DeafBlind language challenge involved developing a language that provides information through the medium of touch.

Pro-Tactile ASL was born in 2007 from a group of DeafBlind individuals in Seattle, Washington, who grew frustrated with a lack of available interpreters. They wanted to communicate with each other directly and decided to do it themselves, creating a touch-based sign language that would change their lives and the way they experience the world. They named their language “Pro-Tactile” because it means to support touch as a means of communication. In PTASL, visual or auditory communication is transmitted into touch so that a DeafBlind person knows what is going on around them. In a spoken or signed conversation, people may give visual cues, such as nodding or shaking their head to show the other person that they are engaged in conversation and paying attention. In PTASL, Deafblind signers tap different parts of the body, such as hands, legs, shoulders, and arms. In this way, they are able to “backchannel” information that they might otherwise miss out on. Locations signed through pointing become positions on the body, and classifiers signed in the air are now made in contact with the hands. A touch of the hand can signal when new people enter and exit the room, and maps can be drawn on palms to help with navigation.

PTASL has evolved into more than a language; it is a philosophy of communication principles and the foundation of the DeafBlind way. Touch is an essential part of PTASL, which involves being very close, open, and trusting with others in the community. Being able to communicate through an accessible modality like touch allows DeafBlind individuals to gain more autonomy, independence, and control over their own lives. PTASL makes the world wider for DeafBlind people and has created a new culture that enriches the Deaf community through shared values, understanding, and equity in communication.