To help eradicate serious illnesses like ebola and
cholera by spreading health education amongst the
poorest of poor, the charity Literacy Bridge in
association with Unicef and mobile chip-maker ARM is
going to distribute Talking Book mobile devices to
deliver health education to 40,000 vulnerable people
living in Ghana. These are custom made audio players
that can be used to share spoken information in
people's local languages.

The Talking Books were developed by Literacy Bridge
in 2007, to give people without literacy access to
interviews, songs, and dramas that address lifesaving
health and agricultural advice. The $750,000
(approximately Rs. 4,63,95,000) project, which is
being mostly funded by Unicef and ARM, and will
focus on the use of low-cost mobile technology. It
will mostly be used to cover the cost of 2,000
devices, and the staff to support them, with a target
of reaching 40,000 people.

The project wants to use the talking books to deliver
education about ebola and cholera prevention, the
treatment of diarrhoea in children, identifying and
treating diseased crops and more. This project will
run for two-and-a-half years, with each device's
content updated once in every five weeks, according
to a report by the BBC.

The devices, big plastic boxes which look like old
cassette players, store data on microSD cards, and
can each hold hundreds of hours of audio - they're
intentionally simplistic since they have to be usable by
people who cannot read, but the devices are
sophisticated enough that you can share data by
connecting them using a USB cable, and they come
with a microphone, capable of recording voice
feedback.

The devices are being custom built with assistance
from ARM, with a goal of improving battery
efficiency.
http://m.gadgets.ndtv.com/mobiles/news/talking-books-to-help-the-poorest-of-poor-624040

Awesome idea!