Introduction

This volume is a collection of state-of-the-art papers on social-haptic communication (SHC) presented at the first international conference on SHC held in Italy, entitled The Integration of Social-Haptic Communication in Deafblind Interpreting and Educational Settings.The Hapticconf 2023 was organized by the Department of Linguistics and Comparative Cultural Studies of the Ca' Foscari University of Venice and held on September 4-5, 2023 in Aula Magna Silvio Trentin and on Zoom.The number of participants from Italy and abroad, including many deaf and deafblind people, was impressively high (110 in person and more than 250 on Zoom), attesting the widespread interest for the topic.This conference aimed at gathering international expertise around the integration of social-haptic communication in the practice of deafblind interpreting and in deafblind learning environments.Social-haptic communication is extensively used in the Scandinavian countries and in many other countries, as confirmed by the participants and the speakers to the conference coming from all Summary 1 The 2023 Conference on Social-Haptic Communication.-2 SHC in Italy.-3 The Contributions to the Volume. 1 The selected papers from three more countries could unfortunately not confirm their participation in the conference: Amal Ezzat (Hope City Foundation, Egypt) "Integration of Social Haptic Communication in the Language Development"; Simate Simate (Deafblind Association of Zambia) "The Potential of Haptic Communication to Facilitate Training for Employment Among Deafblind Persons.A Case Study of Zambia"; Francisco J.Trigueros (FASOCIDE, EDbU) "Progress of a Haptic System in Spain".