The purpose of this project is to investigate how DeafBlind children learn a new language that is completely accessible through touch, called, “protactile language”. While access to language can be limited for DeafBlind children under normal circumstances, COVID-19 has added additional barriers. To address this problem, we are bringing DeafBlind protactile experts together with researchers in the fields of linguistics, anthropology, psychology, engineering, and computer science to create a hybrid learning environment for a cohort of DeafBlind children ages 0-5. As we watch these DeafBlind children acquire protactile language, we aim to broaden scientific understandings of language as well as the social, physical, and environmental conditions that make the emergence of language possible.This research is supported by the National Science Foundation (BCS-2038042)