It is our mission to have resources and services that promote quality.
Please utilize us for CN referrals, so we can provide quality and best practices of this model that is heavily misunderstood.
Another issue at heart in the community is that there are many unqualified trainings and hosts of events and activities that require distance senses (vision and/or hearing). This forces the community to rapidly expand, pressurizing the need for more legitimate co-navigators. Our CNs are ones who have learned the true CN model, have given much to our PT community and understand the significance, the value of how this role originated, who are tactiley co-present with us, who share power when navigating experiences, and so much more.
What is co-navigation?
It is not just a name change. It is a brand new touch-based approach rippling through the DeafBlind community. The shift from Support Service Providers (SSP) to Co-Navigators (CN) has caused a lot of excitement and also confusion. But the CN model is now in our hands, literally and metaphorically!
The Protactile movement is strongly “co-present” through touch, and that is the core of Co-Navigation work.
In protactile, we are not alone. We co-navigate through experiences together, we share information and resources, we learn from each other… and so much more. This is vastly different from the old SSP model, which is based on dependence on a sighted person and an imbalance in equality.
Less is more. Protactile is anti-intervention. In protactile, we join each other.
Currently, there are many CN trainings out there that are mistakenly educating about the role as if it is just a name change from SSP.
The reality is that CN cannot be without protactile or without co-presence through touch on an equal basis. It is never about dependence.
When co-navigating, we explore the environment through touch to develop a relationship with and perspective of our surroundings. It is much deeper than the environment being translated at a distance by an SSP.
Past Legislative work
There’s still no statewide program, but the shift to CN is happening, and now our supporters are confused when we advocate for such a program. Advocacy efforts for the SSP statewide program have been ongoing for 20 years. For more on our legislative efforts, go to our Texas CN website – click here!