This modified face shield, called the Speak & Shield, was developed by staff of ITE College East in May 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic in Singapore. The shield’s modified design helps to amplify the voice of the wearer. On 14 April 2020, in light of the worsening COVID-19 crisis in Singapore, it became mandatory to wear a face mask outside one’s home to increase public protection against the virus. As face masks reduced one’s audibility, this acoustics-enhancing face shield was developed as a supplementary protective layer to be worn over the face mask, to help ITE lecturers’ voices be projected clearly when speaking to students in class.The face shield features a laser-cut melaphone design and a Mylar protective diaphragm that helps to enhance acoustics while blocking aerosol transmission. Experiments showed that when worn with a mask, the shield was able to improve the voice level by more than four decibels, as compared to wearing a mask alone. The Speak & Shield face shields were developed in Makerspace, an innovation-driven facility on campus, and distributed to teaching staff in ITE, followed by more educators and frontline workers in Singapore as well as overseas communities. This innovation was subsequently handed to the company G3 Blue Technology for mass production, during which the company added their antiviral technology to the shield to further enhance the protection of the wearer.
