PDE Degree Show

Saorsa - Communication Aid for the Hearing Impaired

The Problem
Around 3.5 million deaf and hard of hearing people in the UK are of working age. An RNID survey found the unemployment rate for people with ‘difficulty in hearing’ was four times higher than the national average for people without a disability. The aim of this project was to design a product to facilitate improved communications, increasing access to work for people with a hearing impairment.

The Solution
The device facilitates improved communication by utilising advances in speech recognition technology, to provide subtitles to a conversation for a hearing impaired person to read from the screen of any smartphone. A series of remote microphones capture the conversation and wirelessly communicate the speech signal to the device. The device then processes the speech signal and transmits streams of text via Bluetooth to an app designed to run on a smartphone. Saorsa, is Gaelic for freedom, to symbolise the increase in communication the device generates.

My Transition
I am pursuing a PhD in Wind energy Systems and intend to move into the renewable energies industry. I have a keen interest in the future of energy generation and believe that design and engineering are at the heart of reducing the worlds dependency on fossil fuels.