ABSTRACT
This chapter explores further how touch is used in communication with, and by, learners who have multiple disabilities and vision impairment. Touch continues to play a role in the development of receptive and expressive communication throughout infancy, its role changes as vision, hearing and language develop. Communication may be regarded as a two-way process that is reliant on at least one of the communication partners recognising the communication attempts of the other, assigning meaning to them, and responding to their behaviours ‘as if’ they had communicative value. The role of a child’s or young person’s learning partner assumes greater significance in enabling him or her to make sense of the world in the absence of consistent information through the senses of vision and/or hearing. The expression ‘non-symbolic communicative behaviours’ usually refers to our use of gesture, facial expression, body movement, tone of voice and vocalisation in interpersonal exchanges.
