Meaningful modalities: Stimulating the use of tactile-bodily interaction and communication in everyday situations with persons who are congenitally deafblind and their communication partners

The dual sensory impairment that characterizes congenital deafblindness, confronts communication partners of persons who are congenitally deafblind with serious challenges regarding interaction and communication. In order to create interaction and communication in everyday practice, communication partners and persons who are congenitally deafblind are forced to rely on a communicative modality that is relatively unknown: the tactile-bodily modality.
Communication partners do not have the knowledge and natural skills to adequately use the tactile-bodily modality in everyday practice. Therefore, it is necessary to explicitly train communication partners in using the tactile-bodily modality. The Intervention Model for Tactile Communication, which is central in this thesis, describes such an explicit training.
The Intervention Model for Tactile Communication consists of three intervention phases; 1) Tactile Sign Language of the Netherlands; 2) Tactile Interaction (tactile-bodily initiatives), and; 3) Tactile Communication (narrative based communication). In this thesis, the effectiveness of the Intervention Model for Tactile Communication has been tested by means of a pilot study and two effect studies. The Intervention Model for Tactile Communication appeared to be effective for a majority of the observational categories that were selected: auditory initiatives, tactile-bodily initiatives and tactile-bodily signs and/or gestures.
In order to optimize the Intervention Model for Tactile Communication and its effectiveness, future research on the use of this intervention model is essential.