Annmaree Watharow and Susannah McNally
People have been using on-body touch signals for centuries. Most people use touch and gestures, for example, to signify support (patting on the back), and love (holding hands, kissing). People with disability and their families have sometimes created individual systems when sight, hearing or speaking senses are not working well enough for them to ‘know what is going on’.
Social-haptic communication is a system of on-body touch messaging, shortcuts as it were. It can take years to learn a language but days or weeks to learn a touch system like social-haptic communication. It is not a language but a way to send messages using touch. We thank Dr Riitta Lahtinen and Dr Russ Palmer for their decades of work in systematising and innovating touch messages into social-haptics communication. It can be useful for people with hearing loss, low vision and other communication disability. It combines well with other touch systems such as manual alphabets (of sign language), print on palm (writing block letters on the person’s hand or arm) and braille.
How to use social-haptics
1. Establish safe touch areas
Not everyone wants to be touched. We suggest using a simple gingerbread person picture to check: is it okay to touch on the hand? The arm? The shoulder? The back?
Image: an example of where safe zones may be mapped on the body
SOME EXAMPLES OF USEFUL SOCIAL-HAPTICS MESSAGES
a. Emergency
Emergency: Draw a large “X” on the person’s back using the palm or blade of the hand or finger. This means: there is an emergency come with me immediately and I will explain later.
This is the most important touch message of them all and should be taught to all people with a communication disability. Draw a large “X” on the person’s back using the palm or blade of the hand or finger. This means: there is an emergency: take my arm, come with me immediately and I will explain later.
b. Yes/no
These were the first developed haptices in 1994, and mimic the movement up and down of the head for YES and the sideways shaking of the head for NO.
Yes: Closed fist moving in a nodding motion up and down
OR
Finger moving up and down the arm, or up and down on the palm of the hand.
No: Closed fist moving in a shaking motion left-right-left-right OR
Fingers doing a rubbing out motion on the upper arm or the palm of the hand.
What’s around me?
A room, café, restaurant, meeting room, lounge or sitting room, dining table etc. Starting at the centre of the upper back with two hands trace the shape of the room or the table.
Next, it is important to place the person receiving social-haptic communication in the mapped-out space. This helps the person to work out where other objects such as doors, tables or chairs are for example, and also where other people are situated in the space relative to where they are standing or sitting. After mapping the outline of the space, place the person in the map.
In a restaurant or around a meeting table, you would map the shape of the room and then the dining table. Use the index finger or first finger and second finger side by side, to indicate where the person with DSI is sitting. Others around the table can then be orientated using the index finger to point their location around the table. You might speak, use a manual alphabet, braille cell or a name sign/body name to indicate who is where. In this way mapping/drawing out the room and the locations of contents and people allows the person with DSI to visualise mentally their surroundings. For some with the loss of central vision, for example, due to age-related macular degeneration, they may not be able to see faces and objects directly in front. Mapping in this way improves social confidence (and safety). Exits can also be mapped on the back as well.
What’s for dinner?
People with low vison may not know what is on their plate and where it is. One of the pleasures of dining in and out is visual. We like to know what we are eating and where the things we like (and don’t like) are located. By drawing a plate on the back, the communicator can let the diner with DSI know that their chicken is at nine o’clock, the mashed potatoes at six and the peas and beans at twelve. Using a clock face to give locations can also be done on a palm if the back is not accessible or discreet enough.
4. Are we happy (or sad)?
If someone is happy or smiling, then this is indicated by drawing a smile on the upper arm. If they are sad, then an upside-down sad face is drawn.
5. Name sign or “body name”
These were among the earliest developed aspects of social-haptic communication. They are fun to create. It is important that the person receiving the touch message is the one who decides what touch message they will recognize the other as. A ‘body name’ needs to be easy to feel and understood by the person.
Some examples are:
Abbie (who likes to wear bangles): circling the wrist with the thumb and index finger like a bangle or bracelet
John (who is a runner): use the index and middle finger to ‘run up the arm.
Another way to use touch messaging on the body is to use the braille cell drawn on the upper arm. To do this, outline the rectangular braille cell (two across and three down) so Abbie would look like:
Who is arriving and who is leaving
These touch messages are really useful to tell who is arriving and who is leaving. They can be used in combination with a name sign.
To say ‘Abbie is here’, touch the person on the shoulder. Follow with Abbie’s name sign which is a circling of the wrist like a bracelet or bangle. We can spell ABBIE onto a braille cell on the upper arm.
To indicate a person is leaving the space, use the flat hand moving (stroking) cross the person´s back moving to the direction of leaving.
Another way to do this is to use the arm is for to make a claw handshape on the upper arm of the person and use your name sign e.g. to say Abbie is leaving, use her name sign of fingers circling the wrist, or ABBIE spelt out on a braille cell , then the claw handshape pulling away from the body.
Important last message
Whatever name signs, body names, signs, messages, signals, haptices and alphabets that someone uses and invents, they all need to be documented as these are of no use if other people around them don’t know and use them! A communication book is a good idea so that family, friends, teachers, doctors, nurses, support workers and anyone else in your life can learn and use them too.
You can also get someone to take photos of each social-haptics communication touch message that you use and keep them on your smart phone to show people.
Further reading:
Hapti-Co: Haptics Pocket Edition App
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/haptics-pocket-edition/id1520035589