“Her favourite show used to be Friends, and growing up she could hear it and she could read the captions, and it was so exciting for her that she could get that moment back.”

In the modern world, we have an abundance of technology that helps us with our communication, information gathering, and entertainment needs. But most of this is inaccessible for DeafBlind individuals whose primary language is tactile sign. It can be difficult for them to access news headlines, or to even find out what the weather will be like later on in the day. 

Tatum Robotics is advancing accessibility by developing a robot hand that can communicate with DeafBlind people through tactile sign and allow them to access the internet. Designed to allow for as much movement as possible, the T1 Fingerspelling Hand features 18 degrees of freedom whilst still feeling as much as possible like holding a real human hand. DeafBlind people’s main source of communication is usually through human interpreters, who can’t be with them all of the time, so this technology will open up a world of interaction for them. 

Our producer Curt Nickish went to meet Samantha Johnson, the founder of Tatum Robotics, in their headquarters in Boston. She demonstrates how one of the robot hands works and emphasises the importance of testing with members of the deafblind community to capture all of the complexities of tactile sign language.

Find out more about Tatum Robotics here.

Find out more about OnShape here.

Your host is Paul Haimes from industrial software company PTC.

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This is an 18Sixty production for PTC. Executive producer is Jacqui Cook. Sound design and editing by Clarissa Maycock. Location recording by Curt Nickish. Music by Rowan Bishop.