Yakoo’s PAWtactile Style! Touching & Tapping 2.0

Deafblind humans who speak with others rely heavily on a version of ASL or American Sign Language. While this method of communication is powerful, it is heavily dependent upon visual clues. Deaf people can use it more readily than blind folks can, even when blind people have interpreters.

The development of this human version of what’s now called a PRO-tactile language puts more attention on situational awareness. Shaping words, symbols, and such still matter but they are not enough to convey to the sightless and deaf all that is taking place.

Our belief is that by using a similar tactic, we can create a broad range of touch and tap commands and cues to make Yakoo aware of his surroundings. He still needs basic sit, down, and follow directions for sure, but the more we can “tell” him about all that is happening, the more PAW-tactile he ends up being.

Though still in development, click on our PAWtactile Style page.

By 2007, anxieties, uncertainties, and frustrations began to appear in the struggles and worries of blind and deaf human activists and allies representing the concerns of deafblind, deaf, and blind people.

The essence of the complaints centered on the fact that more needed to be done to overcome the shortcomings of traditional communication language models, such as those like ASL (American Sign Language) or similar interactive modalities. Most DeafBlind people are forced to a degree to rely on language format systems like ASL even though it has an intensely visual element to it. Most of the signing processes require someone to “see” or “feel” the letters, words, phrases, or symbols that someone else must make use of. This can be a slow and cumbersome characteristic that forces the impacted person to concentrate intensely or else rely on an interpreter’s translation.

While relying on translations in this manner is an art form, and even though many deafblind or sensory-deprived people can become highly skilled in using these tactics, the entire system is extensively visual-oriented. Fixing this shortcoming has begun to take shape through the evolution of what is now known as PROtactileism, or the use of a personalized PROtactile language. An entire movement of sorts has emerged exploring how this refinement step might work.

Says Jelica Nuccio, in an Oregan public broadcast interview from January 2022, which reflects back on the feelings of the movement as it started to come together:

“We can’t grow if we always are only getting things secondhand from other people who are seeing them in the world firsthand because people are uncomfortable shifting to a tactile ground,” Nuccio continued: “There have been years and years and years of isolation for DeafBlind people.”

Reframing this vision/touching imbalance led Nuccio and aj granda (who doesn’t capitalize their gender-neutral name) to begin reimaging, as deafblind persons, ways to draw attention to more tactile alternatives. Both Nuccio and granda were familiar with training programs that often relied on “ASL Zones,” for example, wherein visitors to the location were expected to pay respect to the deeply immersive elements of a particular location. Or to put it another way: In ASL Zones visitors are asked and reminded to effectively “forget” about their ability to communicate conventionally. Instead, visitors are asked to do the best they can and participate in the signing and touching processes that more intensely bring ASL techniques to life.

Nuccio and granda decided they wanted to replicate this kind of situation but with more focus on the tactile portions of the interactivity. Visitors would thus be asked to more intensely downplay visualizations and uplift and emphasize all types of PRO touching togetherness, an upgrade of sorts that they labeled their PROtactile language – thus the formalizing of an entirely more physical interplay. These “DeafBlind Zones” took over from ASL Zones, demonstrating that PROtactile communications could be made to work.

While our summation here is simplistic and doesn’t do justice to the full struggle, it seems to catch the essence of what was taking place from 2007 until now. The New Yorker (NewYorker.com), an online news and issues forum, posted on May 12, 2022, a heartfelt, emotionally honest, personal narrative about the PROtactile language and the underlying movement.

In one portion of this intriguing piece, the author, Andrew Leland, laid bare the hands-on realities associated with the early times of protactile’s evolutionary progress as it unfolded. In ‘DeafBlind Communities May Be Creating A New Language Of Touch,’ Leland says,

The first rule that they [Nuccio and granda] established came to be called “air space is dead space.” [MEANING: The open spaces across a room where people must visually see others speaking or signing becomes effectively ‘dead air,’ giving way to closer physical types of tactile contact]

DeafBlind people … were continually left out of A.S.L. conversations among sighted people. Now, whether you were DeafBlind or not, all communication needed to happen in the realm of touch. Granda told me that their conversations with Nuccio had become so adapted to tactile reception that sighted friends could no longer follow them. To make tactile words even more expressive, the pair gradually expanded the canvas of touch to include the back, arms, lower thighs, and upper chest. Back-channelling emerged to capture what A.S.L. speakers communicate through facial expressions—a limp hand laid on the knee could signify exhaustion, and a tense grip might indicate terror. “Everything was kind of clunky, and everyone was awkward with how we were using each other’s bodies,” Nuccio said. “ASL was in the mix, and it was a mess. It was a great, messy start.”

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/annals-of-inquiry/deafblind-communities-may-be-creating-a-new-language-of-touch

ENTER PAW-TACTILE

While it can be hard to jump from making comparisons between people and animal-based touch and tap languages, the fact is that the above explanation is very reminiscent of our efforts to find a way to be intensively in contact with our deafblind dog Yakoo. We touch Yakoo all the time, constantly reassuring that one or both of us are around and telling him what’s taking place – or even listening to him tell us what’s in his mind.

Thus, it made perfect sense that we use this constant full-body interplay as our own kind of caregiver to pet protactile exchange. We discovered quickly that even though it was messy and required a lot of consistency between us two humans, the underlying idea that human protactile language could be modified to work between humans and deafblind dogs was solid. Thus laying the groundwork for us to start developing what we now consider our Yakoo PAW-tactile version of PRO-tactilism.

YAKOO’S PAWTACTILE SPEAKING AT WORK

Brushing and stroking Yakoo’s hair in different ways sends diverse messages across his back, belly, legs, butt, face, and paws. We use traditional dog to human touching and tapping patterns, but there’s more involved to give him a truer picture of the full setting he’s in. We believe this is a very similar recognition to the importance of “back, arms, lower thighs, and upper chest” touchiness noted in the human PROtactile innovations that are forming that language for DeafBlind people … an example of which you can see here.

The distinquishing factor of importance to both PROtactile and PAWtactile communications is the notion of SITUATIONAL AWARENESS. People have to understand what is taking place in their surroundings in order to get the most out of what speaking, gesturing, and so forth really means. The same is true for sign languages or for other types of physical interplay that iis meant to come together into a full conversation.

Those who train and share with deafblind dogs have a harder time focusing on a sense of unified situational awareness. One is never sure what a dog perceives and how that perception warps or favors understanding. Still, we believe that there is a good amount of evidence suggesting that our good Dogtor Yakoo gains from the bigger picture contact we make with him as we try to convey to him all that’s important for him to know. Very much an upgrade from other simple touch and tap cues and commands that dogs and their human companions rely on.

All of the videos, pictures, and speaking messages we create on Dogtor Yakoo’s social media sites are designed to showcase the learning and exchange activities we’re trying to make for Yakoo. As we work with and get up close and more intimate with teaching Yakoo, we touch him all over his body. And, of course, we also pair regular touch and tap directives with the PAWtactile magic of …

• touching certain areas of his body in different many ways on a constant basis;
• we stroke his hair on his chest, face, back, or sides to guide him in understanding this intensity of directions;
• we put differing levels of physical pressure on whatever contact we make with him, hoping that these variations show him the constantly shifting situational awareness that he needs.

WHAT’S TO COME?

Putting PAWtacile to work requires us to distinguish two types of learning and teaching approaches that fit who Yakoo is and how he interacts with us:

• We need to identify regular, ordinary (but important) conventional TOUCH AND TAP commands and cues and get him to understand and trust these directions. This basic tactile connectedness permits us to ask Yakoo to sit, stay, lay down, or, perhaps, to extend a paw to shake hands with someone. And while these common signals are critical – he has to be able to function in our human society – they can be overly relied on and become more like entertainment or “parlor tricks;” parlor tricks, some might say, that mirror much of what Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan are remembered for. Numerous writings discuss how the public was wowed by their use of signals to refer to a flowing stream of water, for example. But herstorical accounts suggest that both of these two women knew many ways to refer to water. Developing simplistic ones to impress the wider public was thus more of a PR move than something of importance to their personal interplay. Remembering this is important for us and Yakoo so that we focus on what he needs more than on simple taps and touches for the convenience of his audience.
• We also need, secondarily, to identify a more expansive level of tactile human-to-dog handsiness one might say. We need to appreciate how constant hand and body connectivity plays a role in Yakoo’s mental situational awareness. All-over body contact can do this once we come up with universal contact movements that make sense to him and to us. Once he and us agree on what these global cues are, it will become easier to turn simple PROtactile movements between humans and dogs into universal PAWtactile possibilities. Achieving this will put us in the position of being able to create teaching and educational materials for other people and dogs who want to grow deafblind pet bonds.

Stay connected with and follow DogtorYakoo’s virtual platforms and you will be able to “see” and “hear” our progress as it happens.

Thanks for caring.

Erick, Allan, Yakoo