Things can start getting sticky in the hearing department as the years roll on, especially when it comes to making sense of calls from your parole officer asking where you’ve got to, and you’re in big trouble and blah…

But now thankfully there’s no excuse with the new Captioned Telephone, which displays the words being spoken by the other party on a handy LCD screen. The product uses the US Captioned Telephone Service which is provided free of charge by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Note that you need to have a broadband Internet connection and conventional phone service in order to access the system.

The captioning system can be switched off if you get fed up with seeing the abuse from family members scroll across the screen, and you can connect to the Internet either via WiFi or an Ethernet cable. The screen is a 7 inch backlit color display, and there are four different font sizes to choose from if your eyesight is getting a little dodgy as well.

The captioning service is only available to those who certify that they have a genuine hearing problem, and only two phones can be ordered per household. Priced at $99.95.