DeafBlind people are creating a new language | American Masters | PBS

[@jonathanvair]

Nearly cried the whole time. So lucky to be alive in a time where I get to see this coming together.

[@tbraddy8745]

Me too!!!

[@Th3_UnKnOwN_PrO]

Same. And so humbled to have seen this

[@lifesajoke6965]

The human brain is amazing. It so hard to comprehend how someone who has never heard a word or seen any kind of symbol can still have the ability to comprehend and use a language just as descriptive and complex as any.

[@kristoimanuel13]

Great reflection ❤

[@sundaysmith5942]

Wow, I learned asl 25 years ago, I have use it off and on. I also taught my boys. Now I'm a certified nursing assistant and just got a new patient that is deaf and blind. I want to learn this technique so I can communicate. This video was very helpful😊

[@winros]

Hi, I'm a CODA. Both my parents were born Deaf. I grew up with many Deaf people and Deaf Blind people!!!🤟✌️

[@joycestevens376]

Heard an NPR interview on 12/30/23 using Protactile. Was so entranced by the description of Protactile and the interviewer discussing and sharing what was occurring during the interview using the Protactile method. I have tried to learn a little ASL to be able to communicate with the deaf, but this would be far beyond my 78 year old ability to learn. I am so happy that you have a way a communicating with each other. To me it is quite amazing and beautiful.

[@GaiaCarney]

American Masters PBS & Rebecca Alexander 🙏🏾 Thank You! Protactile is profound, and could change how *ALL* people relate & communicate! It’s beautiful

[@taylor3950]

I’m really glad that it’s growing and evolving. I watched a few videos about it years ago, but now it seems more fleshed out and distinct from ASL. So cool to see.

[@tbraddy8745]

Thank you so much!!!

[@rubikfan1]

Protactile real show that people always find a way to communicate. Its branded in our dna. Millions of year of evolution in a social species does this.

[@nerysghemor5781]

Yep. People are always come up with something!

[@samalsrei5089]

Protactile sounds like a beautiful language. Thank you for sharing this information with the world!

[@privateprivate1865]

Sounds like a necessity as well.. what a nightmare to live a life of silence and blindness, especially if you were once sighted and hearing abled

[@kremenanikolova2239]

Thank you so much for this informative video! I had no idea that Protactile exists. I knew in my heart that sign language is not enough.

[@dragonflies6793]

As a hoh and visually impaired person, this gives me hope. I don't want to have to live by hearing/sighted norms, and I'm becoming less and less able to. Right now I'm just beginning my journey to learn ASL. It'd be wonderful to get to learn PT and engage in PT community, where I can be surrounded by people who are like me and I don't have to feel inadequate.

[@mjoy4382]

I am in the same boat and feel the same way! Thank you for sharing so I feel less alone! I know no one like this in my area and it seems so far away to be able to learn in a community like this…

[@nerysghemor5781]

I hope you have a great learning journey! I am hearing/sighted, but have some sensory issues because of neurodivergence so my initial take on PT is that it would probably be very overwhelming to me at first because I can get startled or overstimulated easily from touches, textures, etc. Have you ever seen any perspectives from DeafBlind people with sensory issues and what they might say about this?

[@SpecialBlanket]

@@nerysghemor5781my thoughts as well. Though i wonder if with reduced viz and auditory input it would be more tolerable?

[@vio3366]

@@nerysghemor5781 I feel the same way! It makes me so happy to see there are more opportunities for the deafblind people to communicate nowadays and all adapted to what they need but I can't imagine using protactile because I don't like physical touch

[@gendoll5006]

I wish we could’ve seen the house and how they interacted! This is FASCINATING!

[@Arc618]

Life changing POV. God bless and thank you for sharing this.

[@alanolson6913]

I’m HOH (hard of hearing). I sign and wear dual hearing aids. I’ve had the privilege of meeting a deaf/blind man a long while ago. The protactile language had yet to be developed so we used ASL. Our visit went well, so very interesting to me to learn about his life.

[@bettycaudill3299]

I don't remember where I heard about triplets born as deaf and blind, but the mother was able to get help somewhere. Maybe this place was it. If not I hope it was someplace like it. A place like this helps the deaf and blind be more independent as much as possible. Thank you for sharing this.

[@timothythomas4812]

i used to be help in Churc h activites and the elders had enjoyed my interpreter for the Blind She Adore my signs and so now i see something new, so i would love Learn more! God Bless you all! Keep the Deaf Blind kids less worry! Learn as much as they always love your training!

[@Jeannek4493]

Wow what a beautiful language!!! The intimacy of it is really special

[@roonboo96]

Wow! That looks like the most intimate and beautiful language I have ever seen. I am fairly proficient in ASL and now use it for a lot of communication due to a disability, and I am blown away by this “next level” of communication; it is “like” ASL, but is nothing like ASL and is so clearly its own language. It is a language of coming together and of community like none other. I am/was a teacher; one of the students in the first class I ever taught had Usher’s Syndrome; she was still pretty sighted when I taught her so she was communicating with ASL, but I do wonder how her life could expand with this more beautiful language. Just wow. Totally blown away. Words really do escape me to explain how deeply this touched me.

[@saphire5271]

So amazing! I’m here because I was blind for 2 months due to trauma. I am a support worker for people with disabilities some are non verbal. I recently received an invitation for a job interview for deafblind organization. Researching how I will navigate through this new job. What a beautiful community! I’m so excited to learn and to be of support.

[@Netbase2000]

Now I want to learn this and be involved. This is awesome. I absolutely believe a touch can say thousand words.

[@stefangorodetsky612]

There’s always hope as long as we have humanity! God bless everyone and everything whatever you are! ❤

[@user-lw4en2oi4l]

Excellent!

[@chriscarroll277]

So very interesting!

[@Matt-Hazel]

It makes me wonder if this could be used to teach people who can't use words or but can see and hear to communicate. My cousin has a daughter who is non verbal autistic, but is very quick to understand if there is touch involved. Like gently moving hands away from objects that should not be touched. Showing that we are not mad, but just are asking her to not touch it. But right now she can't understand why. But that's because the words may not make any sense to her. If I could learn this. This could save her from a institutionlized life.

[@SpecialBlanket]

Autistic people like me are averse to being touched, though. That seems like a bad idea.

[@Th3_UnKnOwN_PrO]

So humbled by seeing this. 😢

[@the-birbo]

This is probably ridiculous to comment on a video like this, but I had a strange dream that took place in 2007 and there was a DeafBlind woman in it that communicated in this way. I've been writing it into a pilot episode, and my mind was blown to find out that this protactile was started in 2007. I'm gonna have to learn a lot more about it and DeafBlind people in general to do the characters justice. Thanks for this video.

[@V3ryan]

I remember in school back in Grade 4 I answered a school question "What is the biggest organ on your body?" And I answered "Skin"...however a classroom assistant, (Not my teacher) replied, "Your skin is not an organ." and made me erase my answer. I still laugh at that today lol.

[@trevorzealley729]

Tears of joy . Tears often not seen or heard but felt .

[@bjrnen8505]

Sincere question from me: I don't fully understand the tapping on the legs. My guess is it's equal to "uhu", like you are signalling you are following the conversation. Is this correct?

[@jetlorider]

Bless your hearts and soul! I Love you all

[@Jaglilpill75]

So interesting and so heartwarming to see ppl meet and have great time on their terms, asl tactile is so cool ❤️❤️❤️

[@icantthinkofaname987]

3:22 I CANNOT ESCAPE IT

[@toyanaydin8248]

bro ☠️☠️☠️☠️☠️

[@David-cg1lh]

​@@toyanaydin8248what si it?

[@joeblogs5314]

My Farther in heaven please take care of these lovely souls and i thank God for the trainers of this touch language YOU ARE MY HEROES never had a hero in my life before ever and i can see and hear normally ... I Love you with all my heart and soul and with ALL the life in me ...i wish i could help it would give me more pleasure and satisfaction in life than if i was a billionaire !

[@izzyn9000]

HOW BEAUTIFUL🙌🏾❤️

[@gran-fromg-townhola9429]

Super informative I’m interested in this language

[@Drknprty]

This is amazing!!

[@deluluSululuAmazingGfx]

her speaking is amazingly good

[@Familylawgroup]

Are there centers for learning Protactile near St. Louis? If a person is new to hearing loss and anticipates vision loss during their lifetime, is it best to start with protactile or should the person know ASL first?

[@farmer4785]

I wonder if levels of deafness and blindness affect the ability to learn protactile

[@linguisticlily]

Wow!! This is amazing! 💖💖💖

[@gendoll5006]

I could never do that. How?? How can they feel the individual fingers positions when they’re just touching the top of their hand. That’s incredible.

[@SpecialBlanket]

You could if you had to.

[@coolsebastian]

This is really interesting

[@josephfredbill]

Anyone thought about Argentinian Tango - maybe leading would be hard but following would be wonderful.

[@prinzezze]

Hopefully I’ll never become deaf and blind I’d definitely not be comfortable with someone touching me that much.

[@TheWorldIsDumb]

It's just a matter of time.

[@lifesajoke6965]

If you actually went deaf and blind you would get over that real quick.

[@saftis5304]

I don't know if this is relevant for you personally, but I believe in a lot of people who don't appreciate you had much it's because of over stimulation. So if all visual inputs and all sounds have been removed, it would not be so overwhelming to experience touch.

[@davidlenig8470]

But if you give the sign for a dog as what is nearly the "heavy metal horns" what is the sign for wolf? Coyote? llama? goat? Or deer? And if the lady at the very beginning of the video has always been deafblind, how can she mouth the words? Im stoked that these ppl can communicate at all, dont get me wrong, but i got questions...

[@resourceress7]

Why do you have so many shots where all we can see is someone's head? That is the opposite of where all of the language is. You need to put the whole signing space and tactile space onscreen. If people were only communicating with their mouths, then okay sure headshot, but this is not that. And this entire documentary is about the communication itself. Put it onscreen!

[@KS-dp2rk]

Yes!

[@leox7674]

Amazing xx

[@rezzafer]

this is what hellen keller and anne sulivan do 100 years ago

[@lyingcat9022]

Impressive development in language! And I guess people, females especially need to get comfortable with people touching their chest area. I’m sure they have come up with some understandings and etiquette.

[@WANDERING_SCOUT]

Full vid in description.

[@HITthegymwithjkhman]

Wow

[@user-dj8gt6ik7c]

Neat

[@nerysghemor5781]

Interesting thing I learned: backchanneling is also a feature in Japanese, where you will hear small interjected comments from the listener as someone is speaking. In Japanese culture you may come off as rude/inattentive as a listener, if you don't backchannel. That might help other hearing people like myself to relate. :-)

[@tanyamarie987]

💗😍🤗😭😘👏💝

[@HKOlaura]

This is so exciting…I’m a language nerd and I can’t wait to see what linguists make of this language! Even signed languages that rely on sight have only recently (within the past 35-40 years) been included in the field of linguistics, but the information around other tactile sign languages is largely descriptive of the differences from the originating signed visual languages and treats most tactile sign languages as variations of the visually signed languages. The opportunity to witness the development of a new language with characteristics not previously included in the standard definition of language is such an incredible gift. That was nerd me. Human me is just profoundly happy that more people have access to language to express their thoughts and emotions in one-on-one and GROUP conversations 🩷

[@SpecialBlanket]

Seriously!!! I hope this is documented in a way the hearing/sighted can consume.

[@user-no4lo8p7val]

မြန်မာလိုစာနဲ့ရေးပြီးအင်းဂလျိပ်englishလိုပြောကြည့်ပါလား။

[@brylefajanilan3204]

ကျွန်တော် ဘာသာပြန်သူ သုံးခဲ့တယ်၊ ဒါ ဖြစ်နိုင်လား။

[@user-no4lo8p7val]

@@brylefajanilan3204 ဒုန့်ဝါရီတူဒေးအစ်ဒေဝါရီဒေး

[@littlecupofpho]

But how do they know where the shoulder is? What if u accidentally hit their boob?

[@SpecialBlanket]

I don't think most ppl would be offended. It's an accident. That's happened to me in the hearing/sighted world just doing manual labor and it's not a big deal.

[@MAURICEWILLIAMS-mk3ye]

That's not new when I was young I met Helen Keller we went on a class trip to the United Nations in New York City in the early 60s I was in junior high school there was a lady with her I think her name was ann Silverman she created that type of sign language I met the real Helen Keller wow in New York City they have the Helen Keller institute We're they teach the technique to deaf and blind people.

[@HKOlaura]

This is so exciting…I’m a language nerd and I can’t wait to see what linguists make of this language! Even signed languages that rely on sight have only recently (within the past 35-40 years) been included in the field of linguistics, but the information around other tactile sign languages is largely descriptive of the differences from the originating signed visual languages and treats most tactile sign languages as variations of the visually signed languages. The opportunity to witness the development of a new language with characteristics not previously included in the standard definition of language is such an incredible gift. That was nerd me. Human me is just profoundly happy that more people have access to language to express their thoughts and emotions in one-on-one and GROUP conversations 🩷