Steve Rose Bodily-Tactile Communication Framework · V1.3
TactileFW is a clinical tool for practitioners supporting people with deafblindness. It brings Steve Rose’s framework into your daily workflow: observation, profiling, goal-setting, team sharing, and EHCP (UK) or NDIS (AU) reports in one place.
“Communication is a two-way partnership. It is not a deficit located in one person. The practitioner’s job is to become a skilled, responsive partner.”
Steve Rose — informed by Nafstad & Rødbroe, 2013
Using it consistently is the hard part.
Steve Rose's framework gives practitioners a precise, evidence-based way to understand where a deafblind learner is in their communication development. But keeping it alive across observations, across partners, across review cycles is where teams struggle.
Paper forms get lost. Observation notes drift from the framework language. Goals get set without connecting to profile evidence. The distance between a session and an EHCP report is too long.
TactileFW closes that distance. Every observation is domain-structured. Every skill links directly to Steve's observation guidance. Every goal is traceable back to evidence.
The 5 stages of communication
Pre-intentional. The practitioner learns to read the learner's body before shared communication can begin.
Attend to object or person
Anticipate routines
Experience bodily emotional traces
How it works
01
Domain-structured observation with framework prompts inside each domain. Quick-tag buttons add framework-referenced evidence in a tap. A live privacy guardrail flags names before you save.
Framework guidance embedded. No switching between screens and paper.
02
Five progress profiles, one per stage. Every skill shown with Steve's full observation guidance. Mark skills as Emerging, Developing, or Achieved. 107 skills. All of them.
The whole framework, navigable in a single screen.
03
Achieved skills become strengths. Emerging skills become goals. SMART templates built in. Short and long-term goals with progress tracking, ready to paste into an EHCP or NDIS plan review.
From observation to plan-ready language in the same session.
04
Generate Progress Summaries, Goal Reports, and Annual Review packs from your real session data. Switch between UK / EHCP and AU / NDIS framings. Download as real PDF or Word, or print directly from a live preview.
Free during the beta. Client-side export, nothing leaves your device.
Who it’s for
Structure your observations in the framework's language. Build evidence for EHCP reviews that traces from observation to skill to goal. Keep caseload progress visible at a glance.
Turn daily classroom interactions into framework-referenced evidence. See where each learner sits across all 10 domains. Share profiles across your team so everyone speaks the same language.
Record what you notice in the moment using framework quick-tags. No need to go back to the paper document. The guidance is already there, inside the observation form.
Deploy a consistent framework-fidelity tool across your whole service. Privacy architecture designed for NHS and specialist education data standards.
Share a caseload securely with colleagues. Create a team, invite practitioners by email, and decide per-learner whether records stay personal or sit at the organisation level. Built for SLT services, sensory teams, and NDIS allied health providers.
Privacy by design · Article 25 UK GDPR
Clinical data about deafblind learners is sensitive. TactileFW is built so that real names, dates of birth, and identifiable details are architecturally excluded from the outset.
Learners stored as practitioner-assigned references. Case 01, LB-2026, whatever makes sense in your service. No real names in the system.
Partner and location fields are dropdowns, never free text that could identify people by name or relationship.
The observation notes field watches for capitalised words that look like names and warns you before you save.
The app never requests camera or microphone access. No photos. No audio. No video of learners.
Add your first learner and see how the framework feels when it’s part of the workflow, not a separate document you go back to later.