I've been hunting for a suitable pocket watch for my blind father for ages, but the ones with exposed hour and minute hands seem to break far too easily, and the talking ones aren't appropriate for when he's up and about either very late evening or very early morning.

As it turns out, Alexandravision (a Swiss company), has developed and created a vibrating pocket watch (the Meteor) that is not only dead simple to use, but has proven so far to be robust enough to withstand a good number of drops and bumps and keep working flawlessly! It's about 3 inches long, 1.5 inches wide, and 0.75 inches thick, shaped roughly like a teardrop with a scalloped side for your thumb that holds three buttons (hours, tens of minutes, and single minutes).

http://www.alexandravision.com/
http://www.alexandravision.com/index.php?page=how

At $100+ they're not the lowest cost item out there, but a great alternative to the other types! Since it took me so long to stumble across these I figured I'd try and pass the find along!