The Integration of Social-Haptic Communication in Deafblind Interpreting and Educational Settings
open access | peer reviewed
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edited by
- Anna Cardinaletti - Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia, Italia - email orcid profile
- Laura Volpato - Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia, Italia - email
Abstract
The volume is a collection of state-of-the-art papers presented at the first international conference on social-haptic communication (SHC) held at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice on September 4-5, 2023. This volume addresses the need to gather and explore international expertise around the integration of SHC in the practice of deafblind interpreting and education. SHC consists of brief tactile messages (‘haptices’ or ‘haptic signals’) performed on the body of the deafblind person to convey relevant contextual information, enabling the transfer of both social and environmental information. SHC can be used with and by any deafblind person independently of their preferred communication modes and often in combination with linguistic information conveyed through the other communication channels (tactile or visual sign language, Malossi, etc.). Starting with the pioneering work by Russ Palmer and Riitta Lahtinen in Finland in the Nineties, SHC has spread to the Scandinavian countries, the USA, many European and extra-European countries, and more recently to other European countries including Italy. The volume presents the history of the development of SHC in different contexts and the integration of SHC in deafblind interpreting and educational settings. Deafblind interpreting is a complex task, requiring guide-interpreters to have linguistic skills, guiding skills, and descriptive skills. SHC has now become an important part of their training and professional activity in many countries. Social-haptic signals are still being developed for children and adults for different purposes in specific areas. In all contexts, SHC contributes to the inclusion of deafblind individuals and to improve their autonomy. The experiences reported in the volume and the haptic signals created in the different countries will be very valuable for professionals in those countries, like Italy, where SHC was introduced only recently, and the many countries in which SHC has not developed yet.
Keywords Deafblindness • Netherlands • TNTS haptices • Hapteme • Tactile conversation • Depiction • Portuguese haptic signs • Haptic signals • Children • Teamwork dynamics • Experts by experience • Tactile Norwegian Sign Language (TNTS) • Young people • Deafblind history • Haptice • Hapti-Co • Inclusive communication • Corpus analysis • Social-Haptic Communication (SHC) • Social-haptic signals • To haptier • Deafblind • Social-haptic communication • Portuguese Deafblind • Visual impairment • Social-Haptic Communication • Touch and haptic sensation • Haptices beyond hand touch • Tactile modality • Astrohaptices • Interpreters for the deafblind • Narrative • Congenital deafblindness • Norway • School • Space exploration • Haptic communication • Interpreting services • Guide dog • Training • Libras • Guide-Interpreter • Tactile signing • Haptic • SHC training materials • Interpreting • Haptic exploration • Deafblind people
Permalink http://doi.org/10.30687/979-12-5742-007-9 | e-ISBN 979-12-5742-007-9 | Published Feb. 2, 2026 | Language en
Copyright © 2026 Anna Cardinaletti, Laura Volpato. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.