Our church just completed the building of our new sanctuary, after a
10 year struggle with the city over a conditional use permit. Once
we got our conditional use permit (about 2 yrs ago) I started
researching what was available out there for looping the church for
the hearing-impaired congregants. I went to a meeting with the
building committee and told them about the need and how it would be
better for the people needing it than using the portable FM receivers
previously used. I stressed that using headphones on a personal FM
deprived the user of the amplification of their hearing aids which
are adjusted individually based on the wearer's loss.

Well, they agreed to pursue it. We moved to the new sanctuary on
June 25th. The building wasn't complete and the sound system wasn't
entirely finished. This past Sunday I got to try the loop out. It
was so nice to be able to hear the sermon without all the background
noise in the sanctuary. People don't seem to realize how distracting
it is when they are moving around, shuffling papers, coughing, baby
crying, etc. When you have to work hard to hear in any situation you
quickly find out how distracting these sounds are.

We are looking into getting signs to let people know the loop is
there and working. I hope there are lots of others who can benefit
from it. We also have large screens at the front of the sanctuary
where the sermon outline is posted. This is very helpful, since I
sometimes miss what the fill-ins are when I have to look down at my
paper.

I am going to see if there is someway the church can get free
publicity from the local paper regarding the loop system. There
aren't many places here in the Southern Oregon area that have any
amplification systems. The ones that do are just infrared or FM and
use headphones. Again, back to taking out your aids to use the
headphones and not having enough amplification without the aids to
really hear. At least for those of us with severe or profound
losses.

Anyway, just thought I would let you guys know that this happened.

Dodie