Hearing loops are vital technology designed to enhance the listening experience for people who use hearing aids. By transmitting sound directly into hearing aids or cochlear implants, hearing loops eliminate background noise, allowing users to focus on the desired audio signal. Hearing loops, also called induction loops, are important tools that enhance the customer experience for people with hearing aids by facilitating better sound and improving accessibility.
This technology is commonly found in public spaces such as theatres, churches, airports, railway stations, and conference rooms. It ensures that all guests and customers can get the best support when listening to an event, announcement, or conversation. The availability of hearing loops is often shown by this sign:
By providing clear and direct audio transmission, hearing loops empower individuals to engage in conversations, attend events, and access information more easily.
Hearing loops are a fallacy (I expect many will throw bricks at me…)
That is because it gives many organisations a notion that the ‘hearing problem’ is solved. (Yes that terrible thing, that there are people who are Deaf – and shouldn’t be deaf…)
Much like the ‘speak here’ thing on the railways (its rarely seen now thankfully) it confers notions that people can and do speak and hear and there is no other thing to be done. Who the hell lip reads or uses signing anyway?
How do people like me use emergency points on the railways the tube? How do we use the many places where one MUST speak into some sort of intercom in order to gain access to some building? How do we even do anything in emergencies? (yes there’s text emergency numbers etc but that’s a whole lot of other faff when other contrivances for the hearing happen to be very usefully at hand.)
It simply drives the notion that ‘hearing’ is the thing (it is after all its the majority thing.)
BSL screens are great but they do not give all the answers. For that one needs to be hearing! Why? Well the railways, they’re good at providing this stuff (besides hearing loops) but when one needs to communicate with staff for further information, well quelle surprise, the staff expect their customers to be hearing AND to speak.
And the staff don’t sign. Some of them raise their eyes or pull faces. They infantilise us. It seems they think, why the f**k do these people who can’t hear or speak exist?
I wrote about much of this in terms of ‘so called accessibility’ on my blog.
I have had difficult experiences trying to get temporary hearing loops set up. And I have a lot of sympathy with Rog’s comment above.
It surprises me that organisations that offer larger spaces to rent out for events do not generally have a built in, properly maintained and set up hearing loop that the hirers of the space can use, to cover lectures, basic PA work, or non-seated activities.
I include schools in this.
And larger spaces don’t seem to be legally required to solve the problem, or at least there is no effective compliance with the laws that are in place.
Yes I agree. The whole thing is poorly thought out and the legislation is useless. Its hard either way whether one uses hearing loops or is a BSL user.
Do those who answer calls from help points know at least as much morse code to be able to decode someone tapping SOS? (three short, three long, three short – super simple to learn)?
Re rental spaces: A small problem that arises is that you kind of have to rend out microphones/speaker systems even when whoever rents the space hadn’t intended on doing that, and that brings hard questions like wireless or wired, high or low quality microphones and whatnot. If the space is used by drunk people at some sort of party then you for sure want the cheapest microphones while if someone is going to sing you want the expensive ones. Another problem is that people in general need education on talking to a microphone and in general they tend to ignore that need. Modern signal processors and whatnot has made things way easier, but it’s still an issue.
All this can be solved, but we have to acknowledge that it has to be solved as a part of accessibility.
As a side track, here in Sweden a speech synthesis is used for announcements on the national railway network since a bunch of years. Some have complained that it sounds boring and whatnot, but I would say that it’s a huge win for those who can hear to some extent but have a hard time distinguishing a specific voice among various sounds/noises.
Also, re hearing loops: A problem specific to electrified railways and other higher power electricity usage things is the increased risk for interference. I would think that you would mostly hear noise if you use a hearing loop receiver at an underground or third rail electrified platform while a train accelerates.
Miam: LOL yes interference from trains is indeed a big thing for hearing aid users. The tube makes horrifically awful noises from what I have been told with even with modern aids and using escalators or passing through barriers where electronic devices are in use the various electronic noises can be heard whereas those without hearing aids won’t hear all this stuff. I imagine people might do if they are wearing headphones or earphones but that’s something I have no idea about.
I do remember as a kid having to wear hearing aids (big clunky useless things) and the noise from the Liverpool Street-Shenfield line (the old 1500v DC system) was massive. People wanted me to ‘hear’ but all I could get was this shitty rubbish! I think others could hear the awful din the Shenfield OHLE made too but it was far worse for me – and it was so bloody evident all the way beyond to Southend Victoria too!
Yes, hearing loops are a boon but again, there’s so many downsides. I can’t use those and I can’t use help points. And yet, as I pointed out, the railways seemed to think with the new fangled ‘speak hear’ ticket offices that were prominent from the 1960s onwards, everyone was being catered for but all these infernal things were doing was blocking those like me from even basic things like lipreading. And if I wrote on a piece of paper my ticket requests, almost invariably the ticket clerk would lean close to the ‘speak here’ and speak louder. Even less chance then to understand their questions or queries about maybe for example I needed a different ticket or something. Just so totally useless.
And I think it still applies today. The railways deem that they are catering for everyone but as I pointed out, BSL screens fine but try getting to ask rail staff questions and they try to get rid of us. I have video of several of us trying to get some simple information from the rail staff at Euston and none of us were having any success and its clear it was all down to ignorance and the fact they didn’t want to make the effort to try and communicate with us. All they did was continue to waffle on and refusing to write things down or even use a iPad. I too have video of a long convo with a TfL staff (he was station manager in fact) and I write everything down (my questions/concerns) and he just yaps away in response. And then I tell him in writing but I haven’t understood any of what he has said. And yes, he just yaps away for about five minutes as he did before and all I could catch was “I’ve told you all this before and I’m telling you it all again!”
@MiaM
As a rental space user wanting to make use of an installed T-Loop, all that I would want is a set of convenient input for 6.35mm line level/3.5mm line level/RCA/HDMI-pass through (for audio)/XLR inputs, maybe Bluetooth. Generally that can be pretty bulletproof.
Otherwise I have to ask persons with limited hearing to bring their own loopsets (I understand this is becoming more common in educational settings anyway, with teacher wearing a wireless mike which links to localised loop/speaker used be the person needing hearing assistance). But I am no expert, just trying to blunder through sometimes with people needing hearing assistance who themselves aren’t up to date with what is now possible/most effective for the situation, and therefore constrain my choices to serve them effectively.
I’ll bring my own mikes/mixer panel, thanks. Or negotiate separately for use of venue’s mikes.