Our mission is to empower deaf and deafblind individuals to participate fully and confidently in spoken conversations by providing a real-time, speech-to-touch wearable device that bridges communication barriers and fosters true inclusion in everyday society.
To create a world where the deaf, blind, deafblind, and neurodiverse communicate and navigate life with freedom — through a unified tactile ecosystem that transforms speech, touch, and space into a shared, inclusive human experience.
A Revolutionary-method of delivering digital-data tactually. 'Voice' communication can be done with the disabled in near real-time, economically, speedily, accurately and with available resources without costly R&D investments.
Rhema operates as a phonetics-based system, meaning it is easily adaptable into any language by simply developing a language-corpus for that particular language.
What is a Tactile-Device?
A device that makes use of touch to help individuals who have certain disabilities, such as deaf-blindness, to communicate. It measures information arising from physical-interaction with its environment.
Human speech is processed to digital signs first, and then translated into corresponding tactile-patterns to the user.
Tactile-patterns are the output of Rhema that makes use of 'touch-to-feel', to help individuals with disabilities to understand the words spoken to them. All audible-signals are fed into the Rhema system; which filters the noise and converts the speech into individual phonemes. These phonemes are used for framing the patterns which in turn is used to trigger the tactile-system, eventually presenting the corresponding pattern through the device.
Priya!... on hearing her name being called out. Priya responds by gleefully raising her hands. For most children, this might seem like a simple feat. For Priya, a hearing-impaired child, this is her shot at normalcy. As her name is called out again, she suggestively responds in sign language as to why her name is repeatedly summoned. When her friend’s name “Ramya” is called out, she points in her direction. How is she able to comprehend the noise amidst her hearing impairment?
Both Priya and Ramya, class 8 students, are a part of a first-ever field trial of a unique system that would establish voice communication in a tactile format. What this means is that these kids would be able to comprehend speech, not just sign language – for the very first time.
We joined in October 2024 into their program and the excellent support given to us during the period has enabled us to progress fast and grow. We acknowledge the kind and strong support given us by Dr. Anil Wali CEO and Dr. Joish Madhusudhana Murthy Manager at BITS BioCyTiH Foundation towards this milestone.
Rhema Systems is moving towards its goal of establishing Glossolalia, a multilingual tactile corpora in different linguistic contexts. We have now moved into serving the DeafBlind and have modified the Rhema wearable for the DeafBlind in Mandarin (PinYin), Tamil, Hindi, and English. We have scheduled to launch both our solution for the Deaf and the DeafBlind in May 2025. It will be preceded with a 5-day training session for would-be users, sponsored fully (stay and food) by Dr. Samuel Stephens, Managing Trustee, Sharon Medical and Charitable Trust, Salem, Tamil Nadu.
