The SolarAid really isn't much different than your average hearing aid in function -- it enables hearing-impaired individuals to get a better listen at the world around them. The difference, however, comes from its source of energy. Through a series of tragic and fortunate events, Howard Weinstein wound up in Africa with a goal in mind: to concoct a hearing aid that even the poorest of citizens could afford. Through a series of grants and help from hordes of deaf individuals that had no qualms holding a soldering iron, some 20,000 folks in 30 countries are currently using the solar-powered devices. Best of all, the mastermind isn't slowing down, as he's looking to expand the nonprofit into the Middle East, China and India in the not-too-distant future.

[Via CrunchGear]

Those darn kids -- they just don't listen! And soon, according to a report, they won't physically be able to listen. It seems that modern teens, with their cloaking jackets, space telephones, and telepathic headsets fail to obey the simplest tenet of leisure-time music enjoyment: keeping their iPod and Zune volumes at a semi-natural level. In focus-group discussions, researchers found that high school students in the Netherlands were aware of the potential hearing loss which can be caused by high volume listening, yet had no immediate plans to crank their jams at anything but 11. Typical of our misguided youth, the teens feel that they have a "low personal vulnerability" to hearing loss -- researchers also noted that they believed they were bulletproof, could fly, and would never, ever lose touch with people who signed their yearbook. The study's findings suggest that the answer to this problem may lie with manufacturers of hardware and solutions like volume caps or warning lights, rather than with the self-control of the end user.

We've seen a wide array of devices designed to help the deaf communicate and experience life more fully, and IBM is hoping to make yet another advancement in the field with its SiSi (Say It Sign It) system. Developed at an IBM research center in Hursley, England, the technology works "by using speech recognition to convert a conversation into text," after which SiSi "translates the text into the gestures used in sign language and animates a customizable avatar that carries them out." Currently, the system is still labeled a prototype and only works with British sign language, but there's already plans to commercialize the invention in due time. For a better look at exactly what SiSi can do, take a peek at the video demonstration waiting after the jump.

Early last year, gurus at the University of Michigan were devising a newfangled type of cochlear implant, but now it looks like the Wolverines are more interested in a fresh auditory nerve implant that is being dubbed "a superior alternative" to the (now) old fashioned option. The uber-thin electrode array would purportedly "transmit a wide range of sounds to the brain," and could give profoundly and severely deaf people the ability to "to hear low-pitched sounds common in speech, converse in a noisy room, identify high and low voices, and appreciate music." Researchers on the project are convinced that this technology trumps cochlear implants in every way, and while preliminary patents have already been filed, it'll still be nearly a decade at best before these things can invade human ears en masse.

[Via Physorg]

Looking to expand the moviegoing experience as much as possible -- especially in this day and age of 103-inch plasmas -- a research team at the University Carlos III of Madrid has unveiled an upgrade for the problematic rear-window captioning system currently used by the deaf: a glasses-mounted subtitle screen. Featuring a three hour battery life and a 50 meter range, the little clippy-screen isn't as hard-core as some other enhanced vision devices we've seen, but there's something to be said for doing one job well. That range is pretty long though - no word yet on how the MPAA plans to deal with people sitting outside the the theater and reading the latest flicks for free.


[Via Xataka]

UK surveys suggesting that deaf / blind individuals weren't having their needs met by technology has evidently spurred the Royal National Institute for Deaf (RNID) and a Bedfordshire-based firm to create alternatives that assist the hard of hearing with communicating freely on phone / conference calls. While there are offerings that convert voicemail to SMS and give movie-goers textual representations of the script, these two outfits are looking to spruce up the generally poor telecommunication options available for the deaf. RNID is unveiling a ScreenPhone, which allows hearing impaired people to speak to another recipient, while a tuned-in translator converts his / her replies into text seen on the unit's monochrome LCD. This Typetalk service is presumably included gratis with the purchase of the £200 ($373) device, but disclosing those juicy date details with a third wheel on the line could cause a bit of embarrassment for all parties involved. Nevertheless, Teletec is offering up a similar service which doesn't require a special phone, but instead utilizes any internet-connected device to display text that an "online operator" channels to their screen. This convenience, however, will run you a whopping £1 ($1.89) per minute, so callers should probably keep those messages short and sweet should they opt for this. Both UK-based services will be launching "early next year," and will likely be huge upgrades from that lamentable lip-reading contraption currently available.