Nowadays, communication is fundamental, most of all through phone and web. All of us has at least a smartphone in his pocket and we use it, practically, for everything: to find a path or an info, to get in touch with family and friends, to shop online, etc. The apps make all these activities easier. But for some of them it’s still essential to interact, also by phone, with real people: for instance, when your car stops, maybe on an isolated road outside the city, where rarely passes someone to ask for help to. An obvious question arises: how could a deaf person deal with events like this, maybe in emergency, without anyone to act as an intermediary between him/her and the operator on the other side of the phone? The simple and effective question is Pedius, the app for Android and IOS devices that provides deaf people with “ears and voice”, when they have to communicate by phone.

HOW PEDIus works

Pedius working principles are quite easy: the user normally calls the service he needs, but, while the operator answers normally, he reads that answer as a text and answers back through a normal text messaging service, that’s translated into words by a speech synthesizer, using the voice of the user or the standard one (based on the app settings). In other words, Pedius acts as a “bridge” between the deaf person and his/her interlocutor, preserving his/her privacy and autonomy (we all know how embarrassing can be asking someone else to make “certain calls” on our behalf).

To use Pedius, you just have to download the app (for free) from your device official app store and sign a subscription (the prices- absolutely affordable- are available on the app official website).  

A LITTLE BIT OF pedius STORY

Pedius was developed in 2012 by a young newly-graduated in IT, Lorenzo di Ciaccio, who had had the intuition watching on TV the story of a deaf person who, involved in a car accident, hadn’t been able to call the emergency services and, so, had had to wait for a long time, before someone arrived to help him. Then, Lorenzo had the idea to create something that could help overthrow even these “digital barriers”, as much important and “heavy” as the architectonical and cultural ones we often talk about.

Pedius, as of now, is available in 6 languages: Italian, English, German, Spanish, French and Portuguese. So, it can be very useful also while travelling (for business or leisure purposes) abroad.