Introduction

A Deaf-Blind person has only one channel through which conventional language can be communicated, and that channel is touch. Thus, if a Deaf-Blind person uses signed language for communication, he must place his hands on top of the signer's hands and follow that signer's hands as they form various handshapes and move through the signing space. A sign language such as American Sign Language (ASL) that is generally perceived through vision must, in this case, be perceived through touch.

Given that contact between the signer's hands and the receiver's hands is necessary for the Deaf-Blind person to perceive a signed language, we may wonder about the absence of the nonmanual signals of visual–gestural language (e.g. eyebrow shifts, head orientation, eye gaze). These elements play a significant role in the grammar of signed languages, often allowing for the occurrence of various word orders and syntactic structures. One of the central questions motivating this study was how the absence of such nonmanual elements might influence the form that tactile-gestural language takes.

Thus, this study began as an effort to describe the signed language production of Deaf-Blind individuals with a focus on areas where nonmanual signals would normally be used in visual–gestural language. However, after reviewing the narrative data from this study, it quickly became evident that the Deaf-Blind subjects did not utilize nonmanual signals in their signed language production.