Thank you, everyone, for your input.
I'm looking to do something simpler and more user friendly for the elderly.
I may have found a solution.
I will keep you posted.
I'm not sure if I'm in the right place, but here goes.
What I want to do is marry speech recognition hard(?)ware to a small LED message board to create a device for the hearing impaired. The speaker would would talk into a micophone and their words would be displayed on the LED Sign scrolling...