Jimmy@Kathy.com

We have enough trouble hearing what people say to us on the phone with poor reception, so we can't imagine how frustrating it must be to struggle through a phone call with a real disability. A hearing impairment shouldn't impair your enjoyment of technology though, and that's why student Suhyun Kim has come up with the Visual Sound - a mobile phone concept for the deaf.

Looking like a 21st century scroll, the Visual Sound expands sideways to reveal a transparent touch-screen display. Using the letter keys on either side of the screen, the user taps their dialogue in and it is converted into sound for the person on the other end of the phone, while anything they say converts to text on the transparent screen.

Sounds a bit time consuming and perhaps a bit frustrating to use, but allows for easier conversation than text messaging back and forth. It's not clear what materials are proposed for screen but let's not let a little detail like that get in our way: it looks awfully futuristic and if it's solving a problem for people then we're all for it.