"Airport aids travelers dealing with hearing loss"

Monday, June 23, 2008

Airport aids travelers dealing with hearing loss

By Emily Monacelli

The Grand Rapids (MI) Press

 

Airport assistance: Vic Krause, left, and David Myers stand near an airport hearing loop sign. The loop allows people with most kinds of hearing aids to hear announcements more clearly. Both men wear hearing aids and are advocates of hearing assistance technologies.

GRAND RAPIDS -- West Michigan residents who use hearing aids won't need to worry about missing airport announcements at Gerald R. Ford International Airport.

In a move hearing assistance advocates are calling "a world of difference," the Gerald R. Ford International Airport recently became the first United States airport to install a hearing loop system.

A loop allows people with telecoil-equipped hearing aids to hear public address announcements more clearly, transmitted through their hearing aids. The user can flip a switch or use a remote-control device to activate the telecoil. Once it is turned on, anything that runs through the loop is transmitted into the person's hearing aid, blocking out background noise.

Hearing loss occurs in about 30 to 35 percent of adults between the ages of 65 to 75, and in 40 to 50 percent of adults older than 75, according to the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders.

The airport used $137,000 of general revenue to buy and install the system, and it is available on both of the airport's concourses, said Bruce Schedlbauer, the airport's marketing and communications manager. Grand Rapids-based AsCom Inc. installed the system.

West Michigan has been a hot spot for hearing loop systems, according to Michael Wiersma, operations manager of Holland-based Premovation A/V System Integration, which has been installing loop systems for seven years.

Premovation has installed hearing loops in West Michigan establishments including Grand Rapids Civic Theater, DeVos Performance Hall and the Kent County Boardroom.

Their client roster is expanding to include buildings all over the United States, Wiersma said.

Hearing loops for the home for the television or radio usually cost about $200, he said. Loops for commercial buildings run about $3,000 to $5,000 for a typical church.

About 50 percent of hearing aids have telecoil receptors, said David Myers, hearing assitance advocate.

Myers, a psychologist at Hope College, said he first experienced a hearing loop in Scotland. At first, he couldn't make out what a speaker was saying. His wife nudged him to activate the telecoil receptor in his new hearing aid.

"It was as if the person was talking at the center of my head," he said. "I was practically in tears, it was so beautiful."

His discovery led him to launch an initiative in West Michigan that brought the looping of most worship places in Holland and Zeeland.

Vic Krause, former president of the Hearing Loss Association of America, first experienced the hearing loop at his church.

"It just makes all the difference in the world for me and anybody with this kind of hearing aid to be able to hear," he said.

"To be in an airport and to listen for flight announcements and not be able to know whether or not it's flight 387 or 367 was very frustrating," he said. "Now I can hear, and so can anybody else who has hearing aids with the telecoil feature."