About Us

About Touch Seeds

Touch Seeds is grounded into the belief that we all have a seed, waiting to be sprouted and nurtured, regardless of stage and time in our lives. We truly believe that it begins at home, and protactile language is what DeafBlind persons have been missing and deprived of.

DeafBlind individuals are not subjects of a medical problem to be fixed.

In a nutshell, it is a language problem.

For the seed to grow and thrive, touch must be embraced and valued. It cannot be grown alone, and it only can grow through protactile language and its existing community and resources. Co-presence is rooted into the concepts of our services, in order to create and share experiences and memories. Without that, DeafBlind people lack the development of social, emotional, and human experience.

From Hayley at Touch Seeds

Hello, my name is Hayley Broadway. I am proudly and shamelessly DeafBlind who lives through protactile, after years of being Deaf and in a pool of shame about the DeafBlind person that was waiting inside me to explode.

After discovering protactile language, I suddenly felt human. Connections were made, and my protactile journey began in 2014.

My desire to teach began years ago, with degrees in General and Special Education and feeling lost in the academic field of researches and education trainings that did not click and latch on. Something was missing.

That is until I experienced my first protactile interaction, which has changed my life. I had an "AHA!" moment.

Following that experience, I knew I can teach and do all the things I wanted to do and pursue. I did not meet a DeafBlind role model until later in my life, and it is my hope and desire to change that.

I pursued a protactile language immersion training at DeafBlind-founded and led training center, Tactile Communications, LLC when it was based in Seattle. It is now based in Oregon. I have been fortunate to become one of their teachers.

I continued with my studies into Education by pursuing my Masters in Sign Language Education at Gallaudet University, which includes language policy planning and acquisition coursework.

I am also a mother to my two loving boys; one of them is blind. We all grew and bonded through protactile language at my home. I am a better person, mother, and teacher because of protactile and the freedom it gives me.

On this journey of protactile language and experiences, I have been involved in federal and state grants that consists different mediums of protactile language research, curriculum design and instruction, and DeafBlind Interpreting. I also have been advocating for a Support Service Provider/Co-Navigator legislation bill and implementation of such services in Texas and beyond. I have established and expanded community resources locally and beyond, and consulted on a wide range of programs and services. Thus far, I am immensely grateful to have experienced so many more of that "AHA!" moment from others.

From a parent to another or from DeafBlind person to another, it can become overwhelming to navigate DeafBlind Education and other DeafBlind-related services. I experienced first hand the feeling of disconnection, burnout, and over-exhaustion. System and a mountain of textbooks and well-intended researches in how to work with DeafBlind children and adults, unfortunately, fail us.

With my unique background in education studies, a parent to two that has Special Education and 504 services, as a DeafBlind protactile expert, I hope to bring Touch Seeds to you all, who is ready to sow our seeds, and grow with us.

My tactile description:

Wears fashionable, textured attire; Wiggles her fingers on you when she is deep in thought. When you talk to her, you feel a steady stream of taps and squeezes. Sometimes, when she is really excited, she slaps you. Engage at your own risk.