The cover textures acknowledge the role of touch in medicine and research, and this issue seeks to demystify assumptions about touch, including the role of touch as it pertains to people with vision loss or blindness.
“We can use touch to gather information, but we can also use touch to convey information. For many persons with disabilities, touch can be a way of communicating,” says Mahadeo Sukhai (BSc ’98, MSc ’01, PhD ’07), the vice-president of research and international affairs, and the chief accessibility officer at the Canadian National Institute for the Blind. Sukhai is also the world’s first congenitally blind geneticist.
“For people who are blind, Deafblind or who have vision loss — there is Braille, there is American Sign Language, there is hand-spelling, and there are also other forms of tactile communication,” says Sukhai. “There is a language called “protactile” that persons who are deafblind will use. There is something called the two-handed manual alphabet, which is a language where you spell letter forms and words into the palms of somebody’s hands. You can also have embossed letters or embossed line drawings, you can have tactile art, you can have tactile imagery, you can have tactile maps, you can have all kinds of three-dimensional things that are used to model parts of the body or parts of the world around us.”
Ultimately, this issue’s theme is about recognizing touch as a form of human connection, which can unite us and bring us together. There are more than 300 kinds of sign language used around the world, and this cover uses the Grade 2 (contracted) English Braille alphabet.
“Touch is an important sense, and touch can be used by many people for many things. It’s truly versatile in its uses,” Sukhai continues. “For me, it’s important to emphasize that if a person has a reliance on touch, it’s not just because somebody might be lacking another sense.” •
