October 27. 2026
By Morrison
Examining the Gap Between Professional Confidence, Allyship, and DeafBlind Cultural Competency
Across DeafBlind services, a persistent tension continues to shape the experiences of DeafBlind people in interpreting, support services, service providers (CoNavigating), education, vocational rehabilitation, advocacy, and community life. Many sighted and hearing professionals enter DeafBlind spaces as interpreters, educators, consultants, researchers, or service providers. Over time, some become recognized, or recognize themselves, as “subject matter experts on DeafBlindness.” They conduct training, present at conferences, advise agencies, and influence policies that affect DeafBlind communities. Yet an important question remains largely unanswered: Who determines whether someone is truly an expert in DeafBlind life?
For generations, expertise regarding DeafBlind people has been defined primarily through professional credentials, institutional authority, and service experience. Far less attention has been given to the DeafBlind space, DeafBlind cultural knowledge, DeafBlind leadership, and DeafBlind evaluations of professional competency. As a result, the field has often treated experience serving DeafBlind people as equivalent to understanding DeafBlind culture. These are not the same.
The distinction is significant because being DeafBlind is not merely a category of disability requiring accommodation. It is also a cultural, linguistic, identity, and social experience shaped by touch, co-presence, reciprocity, embodied communication, environmental awareness, information sharing, and community. The emergence of Protactile and the broader DeafBlind movement has challenged traditional assumptions about communication, language, access, and participation by placing DeafBlind experiences and DeafBlind ways of knowing at the center. Protactile principles and the work of DeafBlind leaders such as aj granda, Jelica Nuccio, and John Lee Clark have demonstrated that DeafBlind culture is not merely an adaptation of sighted and hearing norms (Clark, 2023; granda & Nuccio, 2016). It is a distinct way of relating to the world through touch, reciprocity, co-presence, and shared experience.
Subject Matter Expert or Subject Matter Assumptions?
Perhaps one of the most uncomfortable conversations facing the field today is whether some professionals have become true subject matter experts or merely subject matter assumptions.
Many professionals have extensive experience working with DeafBlind individuals. They may have completed specialized training, accepted DeafBlind assignments, learned tactile communication methods, or worked in DeafBlind programs for many years. These experiences hold value, but exposure alone does not automatically create cultural competency. There is a profound difference between working for DeafBlind people and working with and learning from DeafBlind people.
A professional can spend decades providing services while rarely participating in DeafBlind-led spaces where DeafBlind norms govern interaction. They may know accommodations, policies, and interpreting techniques while remaining unfamiliar with DeafBlind cultural practices, DeafBlind philosophy, DeafBlind epistemologies, and DeafBlind frameworks for participation and belonging. Consequently, they may become “experts” in service delivery without becoming competent participants in DeafBlind culture and space.
This distinction is particularly important because DeafBlind space and culture cannot be fully understood through observation alone. Protactile scholars and DeafBlind leaders have long emphasized that meaningful learning occurs through community immersion, direct participation, and sustained engagement with DeafBlind teachers, leaders, mentors, and community members. As granda and Nuccio (2016) note in Protactile Principles, there is no substitute for community immersion and hands-on experience.
The Competency Gap in DeafBlind Interpreting
One of the most persistent challenges facing the DeafBlind community is the growing disconnect between self-reported professional competency and demonstrated community fluency in DeafBlind interpreting.
In a recent survey involving 66 interpreters, 55 respondents identified themselves as knowledgeable in DeafBlind interpreting. While this finding demonstrates a high level of self-reported confidence within the field, the survey data itself does not establish whether these individuals possess functional competency in DeafBlind spaces. Rather, it highlights a critical question for the field: What standards are being used to establish competency, and who holds the authority to evaluate it?
The concern expressed across DeafBlind communities is not simply that interpreters may overestimate their skills. Rather, it is that participation in occasional assignments, attendance at sporadic workshops, or limited exposure to tactile communication are frequently treated by service systems as sufficient evidence of specialization. Consequently, professionals may market themselves as DeafBlind specialists despite possessing minimal experience within DeafBlind-centered environments.
This reality carries severe consequences. DeafBlind interpreting is a highly specialized discipline requiring competencies that extend far beyond those interpreters who possess the skillset with visual American Sign Language or basic accommodation strategies. Effective practice requires Protactile philosophy, tactile fluency, environmental mediation, spatial awareness, co-presence, and adherence to DeafBlind cultural norms (DeafBlind Interpreting National Training and Resource Center [DBINTRC], n.d.; New Jersey Division of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing [NJDDHH], n.d.). As granda and Nuccio (2016) emphasize, sustained community immersion and direct learning from DeafBlind mentors are essential to acquiring true fluency.
In practice, DeafBlind individuals routinely encounter interpreters who claim specialist status yet demonstrate significant gaps in tactile communication rooted in Protactile philosophy and principals, rely heavily on visual frameworks, or default to sighted norms during interaction. This ongoing issue exposes a critical shortage: while many professionals claim competency, the pool of practitioners who demonstrate deep linguistic, tactile, and community-validated fluency remains small, very small. Until the field moves past self-assessment and institutional credentials, claims of expertise will continue to outpace actual practice, leaving DeafBlind community members to bear the burden of inadequate access.
Beyond Allyship: Practicing DeafBlind Culture
Many sighted professionals identify themselves as allies of the DeafBlind community. They advocate for DeafBlind services, support funding initiatives, attend conferences, and publicly endorse inclusion. These contributions can be valuable; however, allyship cannot be measured solely by what someone says about DeafBlind people. It must also be evaluated by how someone behaves when entering DeafBlind spaces. This is where significant contradictions often emerge and allyship becomes watered down, diluted.
A recurring concern raised within DeafBlind communities is the disconnect between proclaimed allyship and actual practice. Individuals who identify themselves as DeafBlind allies may continue to rely upon visual and auditory communication practices when interacting with colleagues in DeafBlind space, DeafBlind-centered environments. These claimed experts engage in spoken conversations, exchange visual-based information across open airspace, or conduct side conversations beyond tactile reach. These social interactions happen in ways that DeafBlind participants cannot equitably and equally access. The issue is not merely one of communication modality; rather, it reveals how deeply sighted and hearing norms continue to dominate environments that claim to center DeafBlind participation.
This contradiction is particularly significant given what DeafBlind scholars have documented regarding Protactile and DeafBlind culture. In What is ProTactile and What Are Its Benefits?, Morrison and Voight-Campbell (2017) describe Protactile as a socio-cultural philosophy encompassing language, culture, identity, community, reciprocity, access, and autonomy. They argue that Protactile supports a shift away from medicalized understandings of DeafBlind people toward culturally grounded understandings rooted in ownership, belonging, and community participation. The authors further emphasize that Protactile is fundamentally reciprocal rather than one-directional. Communication is not something delivered to DeafBlind people, but rather something created together (Morrison & Voight-Campbell, 2017). Since DeafBlind culture values touch, co-presence, reciprocity, and shared access through shared space, those values should be evident in practice. If professionals claim expertise in DeafBlind culture and space, their behavior should reflect that expertise. If they genuinely understand DeafBlind spaces, DeafBlind norms should not disappear the moment sighted professionals begin interacting with one another.
Perhaps the greatest contradiction is that many professionals claim expertise in DeafBlind culture while continuing to organize DeafBlind spaces around sighted and hearing convenience. Specifically, allyship is not demonstrated through attending a conference, training, or workshop, adding DeafBlind experience to a résumé, claiming expertise, or engaging in exposure-based practice alone. Allyship is living and breathing the DeafBlind way of life, co-existing in space through co-presence, committing and contributing time to be a part of the DeafBlind space. Allyship also works with and learns from the DeafBlind community themselves, not sighted “experts.”
Audism, Vidism, and Distantism
The concerns raised by DeafBlind communities are not simply about accessibility, as they are also about power. When spoken communication is routinely prioritized in DeafBlind spaces, audism remains present. When visual conversations, including visual sign language, continue despite the exclusion of DeafBlind participants, visual dominance (known as vidism) remains present. When interactions are organized around distance, such as when space separates people during conversation or where modalities are purely vision- or hearing-based, rather than tactile co-presence, distantism remains present.
In his work, Clark (2023) challenges systems that privilege distance and visual observation as the default way humans should interact. Through the concept of distantism, he identifies forms of exclusion that emerge when society assumes communication, participation, and belonging must occur through vision and separation rather than touch, proximity, and shared engagement. Similarly, Edwards (2024) documents how DeafBlind leaders challenge dependence on sighted norms and argue that descriptions of the world are not substitutes for direct participation in the world itself. Her work describes DeafBlind communities creating spaces organized around touch, contact, and embodied interaction rather than visual access alone (Edwards, 2024). These contributions reveal an important truth: DeafBlind culture is not simply about receiving information, but about transforming the conditions under which information, relationships, and community become possible.
The Difference Between Technical Competence and Cultural Fluency
Many professionals possess excellent technical skills. They may understand tactile sign language, generalized tactile communication, environmental description (also known as environmental feedback through back channeling), and DeafBlind accommodation practices (DBINTRC, n.d.; NJDDHH, n.d.). Yet technical competence and cultural fluency are not synonymous.
An interpreter may understand tactile communication while still relying upon visual assumptions about conversation management. A provider may understand access while remaining unaware of how sight privilege shapes decision-making. A consultant may advocate for DeafBlind inclusion while excluding DeafBlind people from positions of leadership and authority. Ultimately, while many professionals have learned how to work for DeafBlind people, far fewer have learned how to be with and work with DeafBlind people, and that distinction is critical.
Reclaiming DeafBlind Expertise
The question of expertise is ultimately a question of who gets to define DeafBlind identity, culture, and community.
DeafBlind-led scholars have increasingly challenged the tendency to define DeafBlind people through medical, rehabilitative, and service-based frameworks rather than cultural and community-based frameworks. In Pilot Study: Understanding How DeafBlind People Make Meaning of Their Avowed and Ascribed Identities, Morrison and Johnson (2020) examine how DeafBlind individuals interpret identity, culture, language, community, socialization, and accessibility through DeafBlind-centered perspectives. The study explicitly sought to challenge pathological descriptions of DeafBlind people and advance culturally grounded understandings of DeafBlindhood from an insider perspective.
The study identified themes including culture, language, community, accessibility, socialization, and the impact of medical frameworks in shaping DeafBlind identity (Morrison & Johnson, 2020). These findings reinforce what DeafBlind people have long asserted: “DeafBlindness” cannot be fully understood through clinical definitions, service systems, or professional observation alone.
For much of history, DeafBlind people have been studied, interpreted for, evaluated, trained, supported, and spoken about by professionals whose authority was rarely questioned. Yet DeafBlind people themselves have often remained on the margins of conversations regarding competency, standards, research, and leadership. This imbalance continues to influence contemporary systems.
As DeafBlind communities continue asserting leadership in advocacy, language development, education, research, and policy, the field faces an important choice. It can continue defining expertise through institutional authority and professional self-assessment, or it can begin recognizing DeafBlind people as the primary authorities on DeafBlind life.
The future of DeafBlind services depends upon acknowledging a reality that DeafBlind communities have long understood: DeafBlind culture cannot be fully understood from the outside looking in. The measure of expertise should not be how confidently someone speaks about DeafBlind people; it should be how effectively they center DeafBlind people, respect and practice DeafBlind cultural norms, engage in tactile and co-presence practices, and remain accountable to the communities they claim to serve. The question facing the field is not whether experts exist, but rather who gets to define expertise. The answer should begin with DeafBlind people themselves.
References
Clark, J. L. (2023). Touch the future: A manifesto in essays. W. W. Norton & Company.
DeafBlind Interpreting National Training and Resource Center. (n.d.). Training modules and resources. https://dbinterpreting.org
Edwards, T. (2024). Going tactile: Life at the limits of language. Oxford University Press.
granda, a., & Nuccio, J. (2016). Protactile principles. Tactile Communications. https://www.tactilecommunications.org
Morrison, S., & Johnson, N. (2020). Pilot study: Understanding how DeafBlind people make meaning of their avowed and ascribed identities. Deaf Studies Digital Journal, 5, Article 4. https://doi.org/10.3998/dsdj.15499139.0005.004
Morrison, S., & Voight-Campbell, R. (2017). What is ProTactile and what are its benefits? TX SenseAbilities, 12(3). Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired. https://www.tsbvi.edu
New Jersey Division of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing. (n.d.). Guide to DeafBlind communication access. State of New Jersey Department of Human Services. https://www.nj.gov
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