 I'm so happy to welcome our guests today. I've known Genevra and Sue for quite a while here. I work on, as all of you know, I work on the HLAA Get in the Hearing Loop Committee. We engage with them frequently because they have been one of the premier hearing loop campaigns in the United States. They even won the HLAA Get in the Hearing Loop Award in 2022. I'm going to turn this over to you. Genevra, are you going to start talking? Are you going to be the first presenter? Yes. I'm going to be the loudmouth. We decided that what we'll do is I'm going to go through a script, frankly, because there's a lot to talk about. Sue and a couple of others on our committee are joining in, and I will be quiet at the end of this and let them all talk and answer questions and gather people's thoughts. Because I really want this to be a conversation, not a lesson. Yeah. I'd need to share the screen and yeah. Is that maximized, Alan? We good? Okay. Great. Well, first of all, I want to thank and so much for this invitation because anytime you have to present, you have to go back to the drawing board and really think about what you're doing. I consider this as much self-reflection as anything. She asked us to talk about what are the lessons that we've learned over the last few years, and what is it going to take to, I think not only loop our communities, but blowing that up to the national level. We'll talk a little history. We'll talk, there's so much to talk about. I'm just going to get started. My intention for today really is to make the case that the next phase of loops in America and to be effective is that it's going to require some focused paid staff, dedicated volunteers, a really focused regional set of committees just on loops and even more national coordination than has happened in the past. We won't be talking about the why of loops, and rather, I want to do this as a self-study about what we've done in Lane County over the past seven years or so. I'm assuming that we're not going to talk about loops because all of you already understand why they're so important in this quest of ours for universal communication access. Again, we're going to use this as a self-study, and our goal is to share with you some ideas that we've had get suggestions from you and all with the goal of replicating any successes in your own communities and stealing everything we can from you. We can't start any presentation that discusses hearing loop successes without acknowledging the giant coattails and previous work that we are writing on, including David Myers, Juliet Sturkin, Stephen Frazier, your own Anne Thomas, Sherry Parazzoli, Wyn Wyman, and many, many others, plus many hearing loop installers around the country who have in turn become ardent and articulate advocates, like Cheryl Butler who's on today, I just saw her zoom in. Some key concepts, I think, I believe that we need to turn specific successes into generalities. Idiosyncratic or one-off successes don't lead to replication. I like to think in templates. One bank building isn't much different from another nor an airport gate or medical office or a hotel check-in. So how can we maximize all of those successes? Relationships are key, and I believe this is true at the national success as well as local success, and they are really, really, really dependent on the end-user, all of you. Hearing loops must come out of the closet. Everyone has got family, friends, colleagues, connections, who care about communicating effectively and easily with you. If you haven't let them know what you need, how can they be expected to understand the complexity and challenges that will keep you actively participating in your community? So I assert that self-advocacy isn't selfish. Your advocating for yourself also advocates for many, many others and everyone else. Lastly, I think we need to do something about the laws and codes. They need more teeth. The Uniform Business Code requires elevators, ramps, and braille. But until hearing access is better encoded in the law, it is up to us to advocate. Now, this may not be right, but it's what we've got at the moment. So our story, I think it's fun. It's resulted in a significant number of loops in community awareness in our state, and it's resulted in some extraordinary, serendipitous friendships all across the country as well as locally just because of hearing loss. That's been so rewarding and such fun. So I know everybody knows where Oregon is, but I want to show you a little bit there about Lane County. It's a strange county. It's very wide, skinny, but the second most populated county in a very big state. I think we're sixth largest. So here's the Shedd. The Shedd Institute is a performing arts, education, and community cultural resource housed in a 70,000 square foot former church complex in downtown Eugene. We present and produce around 150 performances annually. We host another 150 community events such as rotary meetings, memorials, workshops, benefit dinners and auctions and film festivals. We provide music lessons and classes year round, as well as many other educational activities such as the large road scholar programs that we've been talking about with folks coming for a week of music from all over the country. We're open seven days a week, 345 days a year, and we are all about making great sound. So it only makes sense that we want everyone to hear it well and with the greatest of ease. When we moved into this former church in 2002, some of those elder hostel now road scholar friends from California donated a state of the art FM system that would cover our three performance spaces. So hang on to that about a minute. A few years later, we ran a deaf choir through our music school. The leader was a singer who had become very hard of hearing and developed a personal advocacy and hearing training support business. I suggested that we have the group perform on our holiday all-comers student recital and do a sign-along sing-along. It was really fun. But afterwards she said, you should put a hearing loop in this recital hall. And we talked about what that was and I told her about our state of the art FM system. She scoffed of course and asked, well, is anybody really using it? So we had retrofitted a six-stop two-door elevator in order to make all corners of our building accessible. We had the FM system and I've been feeling pretty good about ourselves in terms of accessibility. I mentally filed her loop comments away because we had a lot of other remodeling to do. And besides the loop, the FM system should work, right? Sometime later, I saw our friends Hugh and Sue Pritchard as they were leaving a concert and asked Sue how she liked it. She paused pretty uncomfortably for a minute and then she said, well, Hugh said it was great. I couldn't hear a thing. Shocked, I said, well, didn't you use the FM system? It doesn't work for me, she said. Well, of course my heart sank. So hang on to that and realize that she's become our poster child for the chair of our Loop Lane County Committee. Sue can tell you more about herself later but she's congenitally become very hard of hearing and a very, very vocal advocate at this point. So what I would say about our funny committee is that it was the right people at the right time. Okay, we were also about to remodel our main concert hall. So that very, very first slide you saw that looked kind of white. That was about a minute after we moved into the building and it was a nice sanctuary, but it wasn't perfect for us. So in 2016, we started to undertake a complete overhaul of that room. And the notion of installing a hearing loop in both the new main floor and balcony became integral to the project. And as we contemplated it, we installed a loop in the ticket office and used it as a demonstration to see its effect on our friends with hearing loss. And as you might expect, their reaction was profound. A few of the folks who came to test our system were members of our local but currently inactive HLAA chapter. So soon I realized that we were very interested in learning more about loops and how to champion what the shed was undertaking rather than taking on reinvigorating the HLAA chapter. Instead, it made sense to us to support their efforts, refer people to them, but to stay separate and flexible so that under the nonprofit umbrella of the shed, we could have more degrees of freedom to focus on loops and work under our stated mission of building community. So one of the things you saw was the, a great editorial that came out that started talking about Sue and about hearing loss. It's when we still had a newspaper. Sue became chair of our committee with this mission to educate about and advocate for hearing loops in our community. It might not be essential, but it sure doesn't hurt to have somebody like Sue as your poster child because she's extremely willing to come out. She's willing to champion hearing access across public speaking engagements, pending articles, and functionally becoming this proud, competent voice of the campaign. Now along the way, as we continued this journey, I threw all of my, don't draw attention behavior to people's disabilities out the window. And anybody I saw with a hearing aid, I said, you're on my committee. And so two things came out of that. We've developed this amazing group of random people with extremely diverse backgrounds and skills that came together over this issue. So we've got Sue, we've got several of these folks on the call today. Go ahead and yeah, thanks. And put those brains together. So as we went through the remodeling and we're all excited about this telecoils and hearing loop accessibility, we suddenly realized that nobody had a clue what we were talking about. It was sort of like this, when we put in that elevator, nobody asked us why we did it, what it was for, how it worked or how to use it. When we talked about the hearing loops we were putting in, everybody said, huh? What's that? Why don't they just turn up their hearing aids? We've already got a good sound system. How do I use it? Will it work with my Bluetooth? And do I have a telecoil? That of course was the question we couldn't answer. So our next step was that we quickly realized that we needed to enlist all of the audiologists and hearing specialists in our community as allies. We wrote to them, paid visits to the offices and let them know what we were doing and what we were up to and that they should expect a great influx of new business and a lot of new requests for telecoils. They now hear from us at least monthly with our meeting minutes and notes. They receive the special alerts of things that are happening. They get Wyn Wyman's updates for all the new loops that are around. And so this is a replication point number two that I'd like to say is I think we really need to enlist hearing specialists as allies. We could spend a whole meeting talking about all of the, I think sort of odd responses people get when they go to their hearing specialists and we need to get them to have telecoil be the default, not the add-on and you need to not have to ask for it. We need them to do it as their default. And we're making some advances locally on that. So I think to replicate what we're doing that's another one of these points that I think is important. We also began meeting regularly in advance of the completion of the hall. We had a lot of questions and self-training of our own to do. In our random motley crew, however, we happened to have attracted a couple of educators, some business people, a retired attorney, a nurse and two major techniques who had been studio recording engineer. We quickly realized too that if we were gonna be creating this new demand and a big demand hopefully for hearing loops installations, we needed to have a trusted installer who could respond quickly and knowledgeably. The installer for the Sheds concert hall was two hours away in Portland. And anyway, leave that one aside. So fortunately, one of those tech geeks said, heck, I'm retired, I'm bored. I have significant hearing loss. I understand this. I'll go get trained and start my own company. He's now so busy, he needs a regular assistant. So Alan and Tilla is his name and he's also on this call in case you have questions afterward for him. So our replication point number three is you have to have at least one trusted loop installer in your community. And I think it's critical because people are always asking, what does it cost? What is it gonna take in my building? You need somebody that's responsive and can jump to it quickly. The big AV companies often can't be bothered with some of the small reception desk type installations or who wants to, and they wanna sell you different systems because they will work just as well and give you other products along the way. So I'm compressing time, but I do wanna share three public events that we've held, which again, I think are replicable and important. First, the shed held a free come test the loop afternoon of music. We wanted to, I think I'm missing one slide that just sort of shows us, we wanted to showcase how the loop worked with three different kinds of performances because I think this is important for people to understand about microphones and sound production and PA systems and sound systems. So we showcase the typical amplified vocal ensemble with a jazz band behind them and our unamplified musical theater tap dancing and another one that's typically unamplified classical ensemble, all with microphones to capture those sounds. And we were really proud of it because it showed off what we meant by making certain musicians only for the loop feed and not sending it through the house sound system. So about a hundred people attended and it's one of those places that we learned that very few folks had any idea what we were talking about. I mean, it was sort of pearls before swine. One of our hearing specialists who has become a very ardent ally set up a table and activated telecoil programs for a few attendees, but overall the event was like attending a graduate seminar right after eighth grade. It didn't make sense. So we went back to the drawing board and next we brought in the fabulous Juliette Sturkins. And that was, I think thanks to Cheryl Butler here on stage to bring her to town as an articulate and ardent advocate. She did three presentations for us that weekend that were really effective, I think. One was a breakfast with about 18 hearing specialists. Another was a presentation at a large rotary club. And then one we did again back in the looped concert hall for the entire community. She had a really different message for each of those groups. And probably the most powerful one was what she was talking to the audiologists about and the ones that showed up, I think got a near full. This is eminently replicable. Thanks to David Myers and the work through the Get in the Hearing Loop Campaign. She will travel anywhere to come and talk to you about these issues. Now, most recently after COVID, we hosted a really, really fun weekend of events and a culminating event all around the theme of traveling with hearing loss. Let's see, oh, it looks like this was another, well, this is another event. So we brought to Tam Gale-Hannon there who you can see. I'm sure you all know her comedian, Juliette and of course, David Myers to town to talk about traveling with hearing loss. We talked with our tourism group, we talked with restaurants and hotels and then culminated in this big free event. And this is video, it's on video if you wanna see it. Along with a friend of ours whose picture isn't on here who is deaf, she's an educator and doesn't consider that she has hearing loss but has issues traveling. So it was a really interesting set of discussions, examples of funny and not so funny stories of traveling with hearing loss but I think it really opened some eyes. We also had two sets of performance artists, both of whom needed loops on the stage. This dancer in the middle there has a troupe called Danceability. All of his dancers have physical disabilities. He's lost his hearing. So he can't hear the music. So we put a loop on stage. The other one is a simulated radio broadcast and three of those actors have hearing loss. So it's not just for the audience members, it's of course for the folks on stage as well. And I think the takeaway from this whole event is to consider the theme. It evolved from our committee's qualitative research listening to people when we asked them, where else in your daily life do you wanna hear and wanna hear better? And how can we do something about it? Traveling was high on the list of stress factors and disasters because of communication flaws. So one thing that I think we did that is a little different and here's a replication point is took a look at all of that great work that Juliet and everybody else across the country had been doing. And often it started with big buildings and a lot of people to convince. And we started thinking about what happens if you loop from the bottom up? If you start this advocacy and start thinking about top down, bottom up and meeting in the middle about this advocacy, it's really great that the shed is looped and the Michigan State basketball arena is looped and 600 churches in Wisconsin are looped but how often do you get there? And besides there are 5,000 other hours each year that we all need to hear and communicate effectively. So as we held our meetings and sessions to learn more about loops, we kept grabbing these portable loops that another one of those Rhodes scholars had donated to us to use at our concessions bars. And then we've started realizing they made great teaching tools. They made hearing loops visible because all of this stuff is invisible. Your hearing loss, your hearing aids, this woo woo magnetic field that the loop sets up but these portable loops are effective both as loops and as teaching tools. And it dawned on us that you folks should take it home and see if it would make a difference in your daily lives and what would happen if you looped your life? So one of our working concepts became this loop people, loop places and we'll talk some more about it but I love these pictures because in the bottom are two kids from Carlton who became interns during COVID. The gal on the right's got two cochlear implants. They hadn't met. He's a physicist with interest in disability. So they did a lot of work together. They met each other. On the top right, you will see one of our heroes, Sherry Peretzoli, who used to loop at the Vax clinics because it wasn't looped and people then could walk up. So one of the things that we did pretty quickly was establish what I call a loop lending library. And this is something that I think again is a replication point. We loan these out with, you can see the microphone that's a table microphone. There are multiple kinds of microphones. We've done a lot of research to find effective low cost equipment and let people take these home and see if it makes a difference. If it does, we can get them their own loops and it also teaches about all the other ways, how it differs from Bluetooth, how it's similar and how it's different and why they need to be able to advocate for both. So I think this individual agency, the self-advocacy and the self-empowerment that it provided is so critical. You're no longer needing to convince some large board of directors who has to raise the funds and isn't convinced in the first place or understands the technology or the issues around your hearing loss. You can also take your own loop to your lawyer's office for a meeting and request and insist that they provide one of their own for your next visit. And by the way, for all the rest of their clients and staff with hearing loss, you can take it to book clubs, educate your friends about it and the challenges you face and communicating in those groups. These friends in turn own businesses, have influence and connections and can ripple out the advocacy for equal access. The Albuquerque HLAA chapter has led us have a nice little corner in their monthly newsletter where we contribute a vignette each time about how looping someone's life has had a dramatic influence on the quality of life as well as that rippling advocacy effect. So my current thinking is about replicating this is that there's some advantage to identifying a looped site for any committee. If it's a subcommittee of an HLAA chapter or in our case, each one of these organizations could set up a loop committee. But there's some advantage to operating in a looped facility because you can demonstrate the effect and then you can house the loop lending library. And clearly we benefit as a theater so the people who can finally come back then one of the things that's nice about that is that it's using a theater as a focal point is that there's no age issues, it's kids and adults of all ages, it's non-denominational and it's all about sound. And there's one of the things that we've also found is that we need to teach all of these venues about how to operate their loops well. So to commit staff time and facility resources, it's convincing that organization to help house you. Let me think, I'm gonna move on to some of this community training. One of the things we've developed is our committee stopped only studying loops and inviting people in to tell us about their hearing loss experiences and how loops might help. To becoming more, this loop committee is more of an action committee. But on every second Saturday, we hold what we call sound advice. And it's a drop-in peer-to-peer loop coaching. We use it to do it in a looped classroom and then have a whole bunch of personal loops one-on-one for people to try out. Often hearing specialists will come because he's a great advocate and he will help people access their loops, sorry, their telecoils. The peers also understand how to help them with their phones or the buttons or to how to give them the piece of paper that Juliet Sturkins has created that says, just take this to your audiologist and tell them this is what you want with the telecoil. These have been extremely powerful and again, I think eminently replicable. But it does show, I think another example of why I believe that this takes dedicated work. HLAA is great and the chapters are great, but there's so much information about hearing loss that you need a different meeting each month on a different topic. Looping could be a full-time business for every community. And I think that's really an essential thing to take away from this. So, let me see where I am. I would say that our own committee meeting in this shift to, no, hang on, let's, sorry, I've got my handy helper. I don't have a slide for this. Our own committee shifted to sort of specialty areas using the expertise that just came together for professional backgrounds to do some more work. So for example, we have a retired attorney and a retired professor in disability studies who are doing our own analysis on ADA and what compliance means. We're working with our state arts council to survey the state to see if all performance venues are actually in compliance. And I venture to say they're not. So Ditto with public buildings and courtrooms. Other members are living in senior residences and are analyzing their own facilities and then we're building a template around that. We have university connections that help promote the wonderful loop manifesto of University of Virginia and networking with the architecture department to truly embrace fully inclusive buildings. And so much of the work that we're doing relies on the expertise and experience of others such as the great work of the get-in-the-hearing loop work through HLAA. But we, and we need more and more of that great national resource. So we need information, we need the databases, we need hearing loop locations, and we need, I think, a national list of trusted hearing loop installers. I hear that a lot of who in my area can do this. I heard it all over the HLAA convention in Tampa last year. So even at that site, people didn't know who to turn to. So here's where I think we collectively will have a much more major impact on hearing access across the country and without everyone with hearing loss having to become a strident out there advocate. And truly you should be able to cash a check, order a burger, attend a board meeting, get on an airplane all without making some big disability rights issue every time. But we're not quite there yet. So let's start thinking about what it would take to loop all of the banks, medical offices, grocery stores, attorney offices, libraries, and so on. Any given bank is more similar to others than not. Each one needs a loop at a drive-in window, at least one counterloop for the teller inside, at least one portable for one-on-one meetings and ideally a looped conference room. So four loops. There's a banking industry publication, the most, like most specialty sectors that we can write an article for and do all the thinking for them and provide the general specifications and this template of these four loops. Grocery stores all have delis and checkout lines. They are huge companies or franchises. We can find those influencers and again, provide the template of installing counterloops and effective microphone systems. So this picture is a result of looping people, loop places. This gal got hearing aids. She found out about us. She tried a loop. She looped her band so she could hear the grandkids in the back with one of the portables. And then she said, by golly, I own a grocery store. I'm gonna put loops in each of the checkout lanes. How great is that? And then this is a franchise. She's taking it up the chain to national so that the franchise starts looking at this holistically. So in Oregon, our committee also is connected with a large healthcare provider system down in Southern Oregon that we're working on. They were working on improving sign language access in there for patients who are deaf in the medical offices. I think they work with 300 medical offices. We got involved with them around hearing access and realized that, of course, that's really important for sign language, but not everybody, obviously, uses sign. And so we developed and are piloting a template of what each of those medical offices would need. And I believe that what it is is a counterloop when you check in a small area loop or when they call out your name and it's your turn to go back. And then a portable that would go along with your file into the exam room. And the total cost of that is probably about $3,500. Alan can correct me, but I think that's about what we're working on. We've been working recently with our county and state tourism association to improve accessible tourism in Oregon. That show that you saw the traveling with hearing loss was part of a grant that I wrote that we didn't get to the state, but they took notice and probably are doing something even more effective because the state tourism kiosks are all gonna be looped now. And our local travel organization, Eugene Cascades and Coast, has written and received its own $70,000 challenge match grant to provide loops in our county in hotels and other various cultural attractions. And by the end of April, just in two or three short months our resident loop installer, Alan, will have looped 16 new hotels and at least one mobile tour guide system in place with other attractions, wineries and that sort of thing, also acquiring those kinds of loops. And that's just the start. I didn't talk about the airport, but that was another thing that started early on and why it's great to have somebody like Super Richard. And also I've got a little bit of community presence too. We were able to advocate both with the airport manager to show the other installations that Stephen Frazier has done such great publicity on around the country and say this is exactly what Eugene needs. And we happen to be at the city council at the right moment when they were presenting on the new expansion. And yes, they went ahead and looped all of the ticket agents and the gate air, gate desks and the car rentals and the gate areas are next to come as soon as they can afford it. But this tourism group is also then regularly asked to present on accessible tourism around at national conferences. And so again, it's another way to enlist these companies to be our allies that we don't have to do all the work. We don't have to convince everybody, grocery store manager to do it. It needs to just be part of their accessibility and how they build buildings and how they build checkout lanes and how they build airports these days. So one of the things you can do, I think, is self-advocate with your wallet. Go somewhere else if they aren't taking care of your hearing needs. And I think that only gonna take a few where we realize that with 48 million people with hearing loss, you've got a lot of code. And if you say, I'd like to have this place looped, this desk loop, this reception counter loop, you're gonna hear they don't know what you're talking about. So that's where you have the opportunity to inform them and it's nothing to be shy about. It's just that if we don't let them know who will and how long is it gonna take to wait? So then refer them to your trusted loop installer right away and say, he could do this in an afternoon. And it's not that expensive to put in loops. Funding's also easy when you're doing a nonprofit. People wanna hear in church. They wanna hear at concerts. They wanna hear at work. So I really honestly have found that the funding isn't the issue. It's more about the understanding. And so that once companies and organizations and the end users explain and understand why this is so important, then the funding comes. So as a community, we really, really, really can't afford to lose your brain trust. We can't afford to lose your skills, your experience, your wisdom, the enthusiasm, the support and friendship just because we don't understand how to be effective communicators. We can't allow you to retire early or withdraw from our society. The shed had essential board members who wanted, were needing to leave the board because they couldn't hear in our meetings. We looked our meeting spaces and didn't allow them to leave. And we insisted everybody on the board learn how to use microphones and good meeting behavior during those meetings. At work, you can insist on effective communication for yourself. It's your right. A looped workspace is a good starting point because it can also be shared by others. And then have the company celebrate what they've done in their newsletter and on the web. Everybody's talking about DEI these days. They have to have DEIA. Accessibility has to be in there because you can't have diversity, equity or inclusion without accessibility. Make that case on every board that you're on every time you hear it. And so to sum up, here's our current belief of the next steps for our communities and indeed our country to be effective advocates for hearing loops and for informed enhanced effective communication broadly. We've all done good work but there frankly has been way too much frustration, complexities, slowness and frankly head banging over the past 20 years. We need to re-energize this. So we need, I believe, dedicated, focused local work groups. We need a national loop effort with paid staff that's doing a lot more than we're able to do right now. We need the National Resource Bank of Information. We need ongoing, hang on one second. We need that information, I think is really important because it's not just information about loops but getting some simplified training material. I have to laugh because it took me a long time to understand loops and I realized I was struggling with British English. So what is this thing called a lift? Well, it's an elevator. They were talking about loops in ways that we weren't in America talking about it. So this National Resource Bank of simplifying the explanation about loops, ongoing education about loops and hearing loss and telecoils and Bluetooth and everything in your community. I think it's a regular thing. It's what HLAA is doing. It's what audiologists more used to do but it's critical piece of what we need to keep going. Lastly, it's, or not quite lastly, we've got to continue this communication with hearing specialists and this is because they say two things. You have Bluetooth, you don't need loop, telecoil and nothing's looped. We need to keep telling them, yes, we do. Everything's getting looped and we need both our Bluetooth and we need telecoils. Public events to champion loops can happen. They can happen in churches. They can happen in concert halls and makes a lot of sense. They're going to want that business. And lastly, the self-advocacy and personal persuasion that you all have is essential. You can't be quiet about this. Who can you influence? Everyone's got suasion with somebody. Your daughter owns a business. A friend wants you on their board. You work in a library or a dental office or a grocery store and so on. One loop at a time, you will make an impact. So if we loop people, they will loop places and as we loop places, we will loop America. And I'm going to be quiet and I'm going to let you comment and react and share the screen with some of our fun folks on our loop committee. Thank you again. And I have a thanks for a really compelling story and stimulating ideas about how we can loop our own county which is Contra Costa County and California and we need people to participate. So, okay, who's got the first question? And if you look at the bottom of your menu bar where it says reactions, just click on that and raise your hand. Well, Geneva, it seemed. Oh, there you go, Kathleen Ashworth. And can you unmute yourself? Can you hear me? You're unmuted, you're good. Okay, all right. So I used a portable mic once or at least thought I did and a portable loop, I should say. It's called a portable loop, right? And I just can't remember the mic. Your picture showed a mic, am I correct? So, yeah, the microphone is just so key to understanding this. Now what Anne has is a portable loop. Yes. That is a loop. If you turn it around, Anne, it has all the components. Inside is the copper wire and the electronics and you turn it on, there is a built-in microphone where that top arrow is. It also has the ability to plug in an auxiliary mic. And that's one of the beauties of this device. So if you and I are sitting there three feet apart, we just need that internal mic. You can put a mic in like what she's holding up now. That's a table mic. It's on about a 12, you know, a six to 12 foot cord. I can put it on a 100 foot cord. I can go outside the room and whisper to you. So that's why the microphones are so key. You can put a Gooseneck mic in there like Anne has. Oh my God, Anne, you're so good at this. You can put a lapel mic in it. And that's nice in the car because it puts the voice right next to the mic and not picking up as much ambient noise. I consider that first mic a good generic table mic. We like the sound quality of it. It's 40 bucks. You can spend $3,000 on a good microphone. So we don't want you doing that. So there's a lot to learn about microphones and that's why it's so great to have these tech geeks on our committee because they can talk about cardioid microphones and they can talk about all the new technology coming up. But for the basic loop kit, and I can send you what we've researched and done some work with. You want that table mic, which is pretty good. That's great for book clubs, outdoor book clubs. And think about what happened during COVID. There's a cable that we've actually had designed so that you can put the loop into, connect it to any output, any audio source output. So in your computer, you can just plug it right in instead of using your Bluetooth, which can drop or have a delay or a battery drain. This is just instant. You just plug it right in. You can put it on, you can get a 60 foot cord and plug it into my television when you come over to visit. So if you've got Bluetooth at home, that's fine. It doesn't work at my house. Bring your loop, bring your cord, and voila, you just plug it in. And what is the $40 one called? Just... Oh, it's, you know, I don't even know who manufactured that one. It's SoundTech, I think is the group. And I can email you all of this information in the kit and they're on the web. Can you mention too, the thing that's nice about this microphone is that you can piggy-tail other microphones to it. That's a really important thing. So you could have more than one of these running down a table. And we have done that. Yeah, it's called, what is that called? Anyway, you plug in another mic. I think you can plug in up to five or six of those. We had a very large board meeting and we had three of those plugged into one gal's loop. And so kind of set around the room at a triangle so that it would pick up the radius of three or four voices. You know, we're all distance at 30 feet away. No, yeah, this is great because I, and it's been a while, but I think I was using it without a mic. I took it to a bank to try it out. And I was using only the built-in mic. So therefore it picked up all the ambient noise around the banker. And so I like what you showed. I think that's great. Well, that mic will still pick up some ambient noise. But what's nice about it is that you could hand that to the teller and they could put it up closer to their mouth. And then you keep your loop next to you because you have to be in the loop. So you could be, I mean, think about COVID. We put up glass. We put on masks and we told you to stand six feet away. Well, your hearing aids only work six feet away. This way you could be 20 feet away if you had a long enough extension cord. Yeah. Okay, thank you. This is great. Kathleen, where do you live? I live in Boulder, Colorado. I was gonna say you could come see me. Oh, and although I'm from the bay, I'm from Contra Costa originally. By birth. So when Wyman's on the call, I think she has been anyway, she's in Denver. And I think I sent one of these portables to somebody in Colorado a few years ago in Boulder for your HLAA chapter. And again, these are not expensive. The resound pen, Roger pens, for instance, can do some of the same things on a one-on-one basis. What I love about this device, and people say, oh, is there anything smaller? Well, yes, but not generic. So you and Super Richard could be in a meeting together and I could be on the skinny side where it doesn't send out the signal. And you would be able to use the same loop and not be tired at the end of that meeting. And I think it was actually when who loaned me one that she had, but I don't think I had the mic. And so otherwise you have to position the speaker in a certain location. You know what I mean? If you don't have a mic. And I just think this is great having a mic. I like that. So thank you. Great. Anita Ogden. Hello. You're mute, Anita. Right, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Yes, I have a question about education of the people who are in a looped room. I live in a retirement community that was a long backstory, but actually has a loop which we didn't know about and discover and has actually been here and spoken. And I have continued to advocate some here and we have induction loop receivers. And I have the hardest time getting people, these people are in their late 80s and their 90s to actually use it part of that's memory to remember to pick it up. But it's more than that. It's that they don't, even when I use the word magic even when they see it in a demonstration, I don't seem to have people convinced because certainly some 70 to 80% of this community is hard of hearing men, most of them using hearing aids. So my question is partly about education and yeah, and I get frustrated. Yeah, you know, I think what you're attacking, you need is just so important. And I think you need to tease that apart. One thing we've done on our committee and I don't know how quickly I can pull up the slide and you might be able to pull it up for me is try to rethink why this is so hard to understand. And so we created an image that has been an effective teaching tool that we call our blue mist. So it shows a ticket seller on one side of the window and a woman with a hearing aid and her little son with a cochlear implant walking into this blue mist, which is the loop field, right? That's what you have to be in for each of the, for a loop to work. You have to put yourself into an active loop. So we have to turn it on. I have to speak into the microphone. You have to walk into the loop in that area and then you have to turn on your receiver. You have to turn on your telecoil. There's a lot of discussion. Again, my background is with folks with severe disabilities. And so when I think about my former students and charges, they didn't have the manual, literally the manual dexterity to do this. So I would have to turn on a loop, I'm sorry, a telecoil for them or put their glasses on or anything. You're talking about a population that is, we don't wanna change. And if we can simplify it and just demonstrate how it works, that's again why I like these portables. Now I will say one thing we're not touching on because it's the hot burning topic is the hardest place for anybody to hear whether you've got hearing loss or not is at dinner tables and cocktail conversations. We're working on a prototype of a looped dining table that would work where you would only pick up the radius of the table of about four or five people and the waiter. And yeah, and the microphone is the key to that. The loop part is easy, but getting a microphone that's discreet enough to just have that small radius where you could have 40 of those in a room and you wouldn't overhear at the other person's table. If what happens is it starts being so effective for your friends, it's reinforcing, they're gonna wanna do that. One of my favorite pictures that I didn't show because it's hard to read was at a senior center during COVID, they allowed folks to come visit you on Mother's Day, but you had to be outdoors with a gigantic plexiglass screen in between you and your kids. So this gal took her loop, sat with her loop on one side and threw that microphone over the top and it dangled down on the other side of the screen and she could hear everything they were saying even in the wind. So, you know, there are just some folks that cognitively they're not gonna get it. The cell phone, I think it's the cell phones as much as anything. If we could just press a button and say, here, let me turn on your button while we're in this looped theater space at the senior center or this looped lecture. Yeah. The other thing I'm gonna hear is that many of these people don't have a telecoil and so it's getting them to use the induction loop receivers of which we have eight and have the potential for 16. So that's the education piece. And I have done a couple of demonstrations, scheduled demonstrations on my calendar and it's time to do another one, but I like your image and it's... Anita, send me your email and I'll send you a copy of this image that we've done, this blue mist image because I think it's really helpful to explain this. And there is a question in the chat about do neck loops work? And that's a whole other topic. Theoretically, neck loops and receiver packs like this should work, but Anita, you know just as well what you're talking about, if you don't have a telecoil, the receiver pack in a loop space is just as funky as those old receiver packs that we had in the FM system or when you're in an infrared listening system room. They're a pain. You've already got $6,000 worth of hearing aids and I'm telling you to put on this crappy pair of earphones. I wouldn't wanna do that. Why would your friends wanna do that? Now you're saying if they don't have telecoil in those, that's the key and that's why we have to stay in contact with the hearing specialist. Well, thank you. Harry Hafer. Hi, thank you. Harry Hafer, I'm on Lincoln, Nebraska and Kathleen from Boulder was it? That's my hometown. So hi, glad to meet you. Been in touch with Wynn a lot. Wynn and both, and I apologize. Is it Genevra? Genevra, did I get that right? Genevra. Genevra, thank you. And Genevra has well been very helpful in providing information. I'm a newbie to this whole thing. And Genevra, I sent you several kind of comments, questions in the chat. I don't know if you would be willing to address those or if you'd want me to just go through them myself. Why don't you ask them quickly? Harry, go through each one of them. Sure. So your work with audiologists there, do you think they've improved their promotion of T-coils to their patients? Absolutely. And I'm gonna let Sue Prichard weigh in on that. And Wynn, as she's doing it, I just learned yesterday because a woman called me to buy one of those kits that the manufacturers made us a dealer because we're doing so many of them. She said, I've already borrowed one. I've already had one on loan and it was from her hearing specialist. Do you want me to weigh in on that right now? Okay, so Harry, our experience is that I think we have both sort of frustrated the audiologists in the community and also scared them a little bit. I think that we have been extremely consistent in getting our meeting minute notes to them. I think they're shocked when they read the notes at how much we've accomplished. And I periodically get a response back via email from one or two of them saying, wow, you're really making progress. We did a survey recently where we asked them to let us know whether they introduce T-coils and hearing lips when they sell their hearing aids. If they do encourage purchasing hearing aids with T-coils in them, we asked them if they do get T-coils, do they get them activated at the time they pick up their hearing aids? We got one response. And the response was basically it was like, we do this our way, which is that we think there's too much information when people pick up their hearing aids, it's overwhelming. And I have severe hearing loss and I've had six different pair of hearing aids. I know it's overwhelming, but also I sure wish I'd known about hearing loops before my sixth pair. So I would say that we have lit a fire under them. It hasn't really changed a whole lot of behaviors, but it has really been an important component of our program for sure. One thing we do at the Sound Advice meetings, Harry, because we get new people each month is, you check in and we ask, how did you hear about us? And more and more is that they've been referred to by particularly a certain group of audiologists. And I'm discriminating between the audiologists and the hearing aid providers. On the other hand, we've got a couple of fabulous hearing aid providers, the same guy that gave out the loner loop has switched to telecoil being the default in all new hearing aids, not the other way around where you have to go in and argue. It's like, you going in and saying, Doc, I think I need a pacemaker and trying to convince the doctor to give you a pacemaker. That doesn't make sense. All right. Yeah, that's where my frustration is, having had to ask for them this time around when I knew about them the last time. But another one I had is, you mentioned about using your facility as kind of a general location for meetings which is maybe think our local playhouse has loops and maybe he'd be open to that too. But so if I wanted to do like a larger demonstration of some kind, like, does any, their neck loop you can wear too, right? If you don't have a loop in your hearing aid and or the, in a loop headset type set up with those work with all loops, I would assume or they have to be specific to that installation. I'm not sure I quite understood the question. Well, I'm trying to think if I wanna do some demonstration and try to invite a whole bunch of people to show up at the playhouse to experience the loop and they don't have a loop in their hearing aid or don't use hearing aids and they come, how could I help demonstrate it more other than just turning it on and off? Right, with any installed loop like that, they have loop receiver packs. So we have a receiver pack. Yeah, I've got it, Ann, you're so good. And so you don't use the neck loop. What you need is the telecoil. And so that's what's in that thing. And so you plug in the hearing, sorry, you plug in the earphones into the telecoil receiver pack. And yes, that works in any looped space for somebody that doesn't have hearing aids. And I would say that it's probably another one of those replication requirements at this point. If you don't understand this, you don't understand it, but if you put one of those on and hear through the loop, you understand what Sue is getting. And what we did when we were out at the airport talking to the young folks that were gonna be responsible for overseeing the project of this, they didn't have hearing loss. They weren't sure what we were doing, but they'd been told by their bosses to do this. I took one of those out and gave them the receiver pack and the headphones and went behind the counter and the conveyor belts gone and the kids are crying. I talked to them behind the plexiglass and they couldn't he understand at that point why this was so important. And then she said, my brother has hearing loss. I gotta tell him about this. Yeah. Well, one more so I don't hog, I see other hands up. Thank you. Well, I guess this I'll jump to this idea for maybe everyone oftentimes when you hide the video, let's say on a zoom call, I have an old bumper sticker from my car. You do on the road, keep it clean. Well, I'm gonna switch that to the hearing loop T coil logo and people might see that and go, what's that about? And that's just one more piece of maybe trying to get education out. And even like your Facebook page, I don't have a photo of my Facebook page. It's gonna be that hearing loop T logo from now on on my Facebook and I don't do a whole lot on Facebook but just another thought to get that image out there that people don't know about and help pass the word. But thanks, I'll go back to being muted. Thanks everyone. And if you want to, Alan and Tilla has got the image that training image, we can just show it quickly if you want and then how much time I'm losing track of time if you share his screen. So the point of this is that it's all about making the invisible visible when we're trying to talk about when people say, oh, the loop isn't working. Well, the loop may be working and maybe your telecoil isn't working or it may not be plugged in or people aren't talking into the mic right. I don't have a screen sharing ability yet. Hang on a second, Alan, I'll let you share. So you can see he's on the Starship Enterprise. He's our resident. Now you can share. Oh, great. So everybody got it? Yeah, although what, do you have the, do you have the final image of this sequence? This is all I could find right there. Oh, shoot. Okay, well, this is, when we do a PowerPoint it's like a four-step thing. So what you see is that there's a loop in the counter. You need the teller to talk into the microphone. What's missing here is that she hasn't turned on her telecoil and the little boy hasn't come in with his cochlear implant to show that multiple people can use the same loop. It works with telecoil with hearing aids and it works with cochlear implants and each of these pieces has to be in place for a loop system to work. That's why it's a strong training point. I'll send anybody the right version of this that they want. I've given, put my email in the, in chat. Thanks, Alan. Sue Prichard. Thank you. I wanted to add a couple of things. First of all, the importance of creating a larger group of people who understands what you're doing or at least has an interest in what you're doing cannot be underestimated. I don't think in terms of its impact on this whole program. So we have not only our list of audiologists and hearing aid dispensers, but we also have a very large list of people that have expressed an interest either through the shed, through Geneva's incredible advocacy or through our connections. So we have a list of a few hundred people who get all of our meeting notes every single month and they get our notices for things, events that are happening. And that has created a larger body of people who understand what we're doing. The other thing is I want to respond real quickly to Anita's comment about how hard it is to get people to understand this stuff and to jump on board. And I think our sound advice sessions on Saturday morning have been really instructional for us about how much help people need and how much support they need before they can really actually fully take advantage of the hearing devices that they have. People need comfort, they need support, they need information. It's complex, it's very confusing to so many people. And our sessions have really been helpful. And that's why people come back, I think sometimes two or three or four times because they need that much in order to really understand it and get it. See if there was anything else here. Well, oh, and then I want to just add that there's another replication point that Geneva failed to put up here and that is you need to have somebody at the very head of the top of the pile who has a passion for disability issues. And Geneva has been that person for us because her history has been disability education. She's very just sort of intuitively aware of how important it is for everybody to have access. And so if you can get somebody in your group who really has that passion and that connection to the disability community, it's very, very helpful. Thank you. Thanks, Sue. Susan Beck. The thing that you held up is, sorry. Susan, do you mean this? Yes, is that the portable loop? Yes. That you take places? Yeah. Okay, and is there a brand that you're... I put it all in the chat. Yeah, there are two versions of this. One is made by a group called Williams, AV, and again, I can send you information on the kit, all of this stuff. The other is Contacta. They have a version of this. So they're two, basically two companies making them. theirs looks more almost like a stadium seat. I like this model. I like the sound quality. I like its visibility. I like the fact that it's not invisible. Yeah, so here's the Contacta one. And they're both similar. The Williams is a little smaller. They were both designed to be countertop loops. And when I called Williams and said, look, I'm about to go to the National Convention and tell them the world that this is the greatest things in sliced bread and it's getting back ordered. Every time I order something off the web, they said, nobody's ever used it that way. So we'll just make you a dealer, meaning I'm not trying to sell these to make money, but it lets me order directly from the company at wholesale costs. So I just cover our costs when I resell a kit to people. We've done all the research. I'm not trying to sell this to anybody, but I'm making it available in an easy way if you want it. So this particular one has, I think, is much better than the Contacta version. It has an additional place to add an audio connection. So I personally dream of every information counter in America being accessible to everybody. I want a hearing loop for us. I want an iPad attached to the hearing loop. And the microphone on the hearing loop would then be fed into the iPad. And on that iPad would be two apps, one for ASL and one for speech to text captions. And you can do that with this one, but you can't do that with a Contacta one because it doesn't have the additional audio port. Thank you. Oh, Steve Sugarts. Oh, yes, I'm... Why is it AS... OK, yes, from Westchester, Pennsylvania. Hi, Ann, how are you doing? Excuse me. I have a quick two comments and then one question or one something I think I'll share. Sue Pritchard, you were right. Absolute, well-qualified advocate is key, I think, and that's really hard to come by, as is volunteers. And that's all part of... It sounds like you guys have had a nice run for what is eight years or 10 years or something. For most of us, we're just getting started. So baby steps, but all your information was really good. Steve, I gotta say, I haven't found it that hard to get volunteers and I'll let Alan and I think Mike McCabe is still on here. This is such an important issue for you and for anybody like you that, especially, you know, many of us are retirees, so we've got... I'm not, but I... So think of me almost as that paid staff person. So I think that's part of why that element could be important, but the passion is because you're making such a difference. When I watch people cry leaving the concert hall because they said, I never thought I was gonna hear violins again. Holy smokes, Juliet's got stories and Alan has stories of people saying from the back of the church, I haven't heard the pastor in 15 years. Finally, there's a reason for me to come here. I don't think it's that hard. I do think there is still the stigma about this shyness and if we can do what I did around looking at anybody that's got a hearing aid onset, I need you. I need you to come and think with me, even if it's just for one or two times. Where are you having trouble hearing in your life and start having this conversation? When you're start being effective, it's just, it's so reinforcing. Right, that well that leads into what I was gonna say. The interesting part of loop systems and I'll speak primarily to group settings, concert hall church, although it's the same as a cash register checkout in a grocery store. The way the loop is set up and how the volume and other adjustments are done. Now in a larger setting, everything goes through a mixer. How the mixer is set is critical as I found out by what we've been doing in one of our recent efforts is attending different places and some they just don't have it turned up. And yes, you can tell it's on but you really don't hear much because it's not much different than the room. So then the other one is the supermarket. It might be on but they haven't adjusted the sound to fit for a person. And even this one big supermarket chain in our area who's very supportive and has one in every store in four locations. We haven't quite got to where we're gonna sit down with them basically on email, but they have people come in and test all their accessibility equipment and they say it's working. But we're gonna say, no, it might be on but the volume and other settings. And I just proved this last night at a library. I went again, or my wife and I, we went again to a little movie just to see, okay, what is it set at? And is it volume high enough? And then the other settings, how do they, in the mixture, what do they do? So it's an advocacy. Yeah, it's both advocacy and it's training. So two things. One is, I would argue that in the concert hall that whatever mix we sent out in the old days through the FM probably didn't work very well either. And so the guy on the soundboard, the gal on the soundboard in our case has to understand this complexity regardless of the system that's going on. So that's an important part of training. It's another reason that I think using a local performance space as your site is a really good one because we are the most complex version of whatever sound output you're gonna get. And so getting good sound there is the same as, you know, the same problems in a church. Sue went to church, could hear the pastor fine because there was a mic on him. And when the harp and the soloist came on, they told her to move up front. Well, no, you have to put out a capture mic on them. And to your point, we need verifiers. We need people that understand what should be coming through a loop system just like you said. And that's where the training of your team to go out and verify any loop system and to stay on it because we without hearing loss aren't always dialed into the hearing loop. If someone's gone wonky or wire broke or it's not plugged in, we don't necessarily know it. When you walk into our concert hall, one of our geeks has created a loop that says, if you can hear this, the telecoil is on, your telecoil program's on, you can turn it off now until the program comes because the loops, you know, that kind of thing. But for instance, the grocery store, Allen set it all up, looked great, worked when it was quiet. And then what we found was the checkers weren't standing in the right place to address the microphone well. So we, he moved the microphone, super glued it. Same at the airport, by God, we had to iron fist those mics down because they're such a key part, but it takes you complaining or being a knowledgeable advocate saying it's on, it's not working, my telecoil's on, something's wrong. And often it's that mic or the mix. So that's where I think the ongoing understanding of this is so important in the self advocacy. Agreed. Steve, do you know the installer for the locations that you're talking about? No, I know, we work with a installer in Southeastern Pennsylvania. Gentleman is very good, but I don't know who installed all these. Oh, I do know the installer at the theater in Westchester. So if I were in your shoes, I would see if I could ask who the installer was and go talk to the installer and tell them what's happening. Oh, I'm sorry. I thought you meant the installing company. They actually disassociate once they've installed it. No, I'm gonna go talk to the soundboard people at the theater. Yeah, so this place that you don't know right now is you don't know whether that loop was installed to the IEC standard. Oh, it was. That one I know. That one, it was, a huge project. They redesigned this building and put it in. That one's really well done. It's just the fact that, well, several people went for several shows five years ago when they opened and it wasn't on. That was the first hurdle. So now at least it's on every performance. And the next step is, I'm gonna try to sit with the soundboard people and say, wait a minute, you don't have it set correctly. And then we'll go from there. And then. Thank you. Yeah, you're welcome. Kathleen again. Ashley. Oh, okay. Just a couple of things I was thinking about. So our local JCC, well, I'll back up a minute. There was a particular film I wanted to see but it doesn't have captions. And so, and it was being promoted all over Boulder and anyway. So then I found out that the local JCC was gonna be showing it. And then when told me that they were going to be installing a system. Now they did, they installed an FM system. But I learned from when that the problem with an FM system is that if you wear a, is the neck loop with somebody who wears a pacemaker. So I was, I could go, but my husband couldn't. So anybody I talked to, I would say, please don't install an FM system. I don't know how I can convince them to go back and get the JCC to install a hearing loop system. But I just think that's important for companies to know. And then the other thing is just something that happened to me is my T-coil was first set so that I couldn't hear conversation next to me. And I don't think it was until later, I realized that you could have your audiologist set it for you both. So that you can, it works on T-coil but you can also hear conversation. And that's important to me. I don't wanna be completely blocked out of if the person sitting next to me is talking to me. So these are just all little nuances that we learn as we go and then inform our audiologist to take care of. Kathleen, there's an error in your thinking about the pacemaker. So all receivers, whether they're hearing loop receivers, FM receivers or infrared receivers, theoretically, could have pacemaker issues. And the rule of thumb is if somebody has a pacemaker, they just don't put it on the side. They have the pacemaker. So theoretically, like, oh, let me unplug this. Well, I've read the- If your pacemaker were on this side, you just, it's an inconvenience but you'd probably hold it there. We've had Elima write a paper about that. There's never been an incident where anybody with a pacemaker's had a problem, but it's a CYA for the companies. I just saw what Medtronic wrote about it. And they, you could put it, but you'd have to hang it on your shoulder so you couldn't put it around your neck. Or you could put it right now- Well, if you don't have a telecoil, oh. So if you had a telecoil that would only be problematic with an FM or an infrared potentially, I think it's doable. Yeah, you would have to push the receiver away from your pacemaker. And the same thing is true with a hearing loop receiver for a person who doesn't have a telecoil. Oh, I wasn't thinking of that. I'm thinking of, you know, you have a telecoil and but you go to a venue where they give you a neck loop because they don't have a hearing loop and they have an FM system, let's say. So they give you a hearing loop, but it's just really, and what if you don't know that you should not have the receiver near your pacemaker? There's never been an issue with that. Well, I'm just telling you what Medtronic would tell you, that the company that produces the pacemaker. Oh, so can you send me that information? Sure. Yeah, I'd love to see that in writing. I'd need that, actually. Okay. Thank you. Alan Attila. Ann Attila. Yeah, you got it right. I'm a hearing loop installer and I just wanted a little tip for everyone who's having a hard time. You know, it's a tough sell to get a loop in a facility. The best way to sell the hearing loop is get an installer to come in and put a loop in temporarily. I've done this numerous times. I have a utility driver. I can put wire on the floor in about 20 to 30 minutes, bring some loop listeners and as we all know, hearing is believing. So temporary loops sell hearing loops. So I'd like everybody who lives in Northern California to know that our loop installer is on this meeting today, Jeffrey Kluss. And so Jeff all the time goes out and does temporary loops at venues. So be assured that we do have a loop installer. Hello everyone. Jeff, do you want to say anything? Yeah, no, this is wonderful. A lot of good ideas here because I know Northern California, certain parts of Northern California where I install systems really lack the education of what a hearing loop is and what it can provide. So that's an ongoing battle and certainly all the things that Geneva talked about possibilities for advocating either thought of or have done. And it's never an easy task. It seems like it's an ongoing process to continue with this type of technology. So Jeff, one thing that Steve brought up and we spend a lot of time working on is staff training, internal staff training, not just the tech guy on the board but all of our ushers and anybody in the ticket office and that sort of thing. And I know that one thing that Alan does when he installs is has a little training session with the staff, but the problem is, the turnover is so great. I called one venue to verify it for when Wyman's Google Maps, a site that I knew had a loop in it. They had a new manager and a new executive director and neither one of them really knew Diddley about loops. And they said, well, nobody's using it because nobody's checking out the receiver packs. And I said, no, that's the good news. Everybody's using it, but I don't believe you're probably turning it on. So it is fine, but what I would say, and this is again, back to the self advocacy and why we need the reinforcement from people with hearing loss is that I think the same is true for FM infrared, anything else, we need people to come in and expect to have a good quality, working assistive listening system. And especially anywhere you see a tee for a telecoil and no question marks, you know exactly what to expect. No, I agree. The telecoil is working. So you help them troubleshoot. You don't be bitchy about it. You be nice about it, you know? Yeah, yeah, sure. Robin Miller, and you're a mute. Hi, thanks for this program. I even know it didn't look like I was here. I heard it was listening on my phone for a while, but this just brought up a question and knows about this. And where I live, there's a, it worked like California, there's a disability center called at Roberts Campus and they have, and it's pretty new. And when they built it, for whatever reason they didn't put in loops, but now they have loops in the conference rooms, but they always have their, not always, but a lot of organizations have bigger meetings and galleys in the main, like it's sort of in the atrium of the building. And that does not have a loop and they've said they can't do it because of they can't do both, this is what they said, that they can't do both the conference rooms that they already have looped and the whole main building that there's a conflict. So they've been looping the atrium, part of the atrium for, you know, temporarily whenever they have these meetings, some, not all of them, some galleys, but it doesn't, for various reasons, it's very unsatisfactory. So I'm wondering. Where was this? And both Jeffrey and Alan can speak to this. They don't understand loops is what I would say. They absolutely, this is why you need the knowledgeable part of a loop installer. They have to understand phased arrays and perimeter loops and where the spill is and where it isn't and how you avoid that. In our building, we have loops on top of loops and next to loops and within loops. You can have a loop in a looped room, those portables, you know, when we break out into small groups, I'll put a portable on each of the tables and they, you don't, you don't, there's no interference, there's no problem. Oh, that's interesting. Okay, thanks for that. So Robin, you're talking about the Ed Roberts Center, right? Yeah, yeah. And I actually know more information about that and they were given a bid for both of them and they having the atrium be done in a unique and special way so that could be used. So I'm questioning what somebody, the information that you were told. But this could be, this is, I mean, I don't know what this current status is. I'll say that. I'm talking about five years ago because since COVID, I haven't been there, but I was, yeah. So I may even have it wrong, but that was the last I thought I'd do. So one of the most knowledgeable people in the United States about hearing loops was Richard McKinley. And I personally was there when he viewed the situation and they were talking about putting the loop up above so it wasn't on the floor. And I know that it was completely doable. I think the situation may have been, they didn't want to spend the money. And considering it's the Ed Roberts Center, that's really pathetic. I agree. So, Ms. Sherrie Parazoli. So this is a wonderful, wonderful presentation and thank you so much for holding it. And I really loved listening to all the points that you had to make about how to replicate your successes. I even learned a few things or two. So this was great. And I think it's so good to hear the questions from the participants. Some really, really great questions have been asked. So I just really wanted to thank you for holding the presentation. One thing that I would just like to ask about is as we are talking about talking to audiologist in the next couple of weeks, what would you say would be our main message? For me, the main message is telecoil has to be the default. That you want the smallest, you want rechargeable batteries, you want Bluetooth and you want telecoil. And that's it. And any other fancy bells and whistles that come along. But get rid of the small other than, unless it, get rid of the small for vanity sake, small for comfort and everything is good, but not at the expense of not having telecoil. Well said, well said. I forgot to introduce Sherry. We talk on all the time and with Geneva on about hearing loop things. Sherry is the HLAA get in the hearing loop committee chair. She lives in Washington state. So thank you very much, Anne. I think a lot of people do know a lot about our success. I think, you know, I had wear mini hats for HLAA and I have not been able to dedicate as much time as I would have liked to our efforts in Washington in the last few years as I'd like to. But one of the things I just keep going back to that you have in your must-dos is the good installer. Having an installer you can trust. And, you know, I feel fortunate that we were able to start with an installer that we trusted, watched him learn a lot along the way. And we've also felt confident in being able to call in installers outside of our area. That is an extra expense, but... Oh, Sherry froze. While we're waiting to see if she comes back, I'd like to dress a little bit of attention to something that Kathleen Ashworth said about telecoils. Many people do not know that you can have more than one telecoil setting in your hearing instrument. Before I ended up with two cochlear implants, I always had two. I had one that was T-coil and mic, Kathleen, which is what you were saying you wanted. And then I had a T-coil only program. Today, almost all new hearing aids have an app. And the app allows you to change the balance between the microphone and the telecoil. So, Kathleen, do you have an app with your hearing instrument? So, if you're asking, I use an app on my phone to control it. No, I'm saying do you have an app for your hearing aids on your phone? Yes, yeah. So, you need to go into that app and look for the T-coil. And I would be willing to bet 90% that you can adjust the microphone and the mic setting in your app. Oh, okay, I thought the audiologist said it for me, but you're saying I could do it myself. So, she has to activate the telecoil. Yeah. Once the telecoil is active in instruments that have an app for their hearing aid or cochlear implant, you go to the setting for telecoil. You just adjust how much microphone, how much telecoil you want. Okay, yeah. And there is a big value for having only a T-coil program. And we found that when we were advocating for hearing loops for our Bay Area Rapid Transit. And so, when we did the pilot program, there were maybe 10 of us from the DV chapter, a handful from the Peninsula chapter. And I had both programs, so I could check to see what the telecoil was like there. Well, everybody who only had a telecoil and mic program said it was terrible because what they picked up was the noise of the station with the telecoil. When I had telecoil only, the station noise was completely gone because it wasn't close enough to the microphone. So any place that there's a lot of background noise, you want T-coil only. Okay. And so people know, Jeff Kluss installed the first hearing loop on the platform for Bart and was very instrumental in all of our work with Bart and doing that pilot program for the Fremont station. They had to do it only at night. They had to cut. So Jeff was working. Jeff, what was it? From two o'clock in the morning till four? You're mute, Jeff. Yeah. Okay. Got me now. So yeah, no, it was all done at night. It was not the funnest project I've done, but we got it done and now it's available. But yeah, that's an amazing example of what telecoil technology can do for all of us who are in need of it, especially in transit places like Bart. If we could get more of those loop traveling would be a lot easier for all of us. Jim, do you go by Jim or James? Ralph? Jim, we're all answered to James. Oh. So thanks for calling me. I've been sitting and listening to this whole thing from the beginning and I've been listening to the Loop Lake County Committee for years and years in the background and so much respect to everything that they're doing. And we keep on working on it. My focus is the executive director, the Shad Institute has been mostly on exactly the things that have come up quite a bit during this discussion in terms of what a venue needs to do in order to make it successful. Steve's comment here is Steve, right? That you're talking about the problem of not being on or so much of the time, it's just not both the drivers and even the microphones are not correctly set up and that's a constant problem that at very early on we as an organization had to make a distinction between the investment and the capital investment of actually putting in the loops throughout the bill. I think we have 14 to 16 of them now and we're continuing to put them in where and as you were saying you could put a loop upon a loop to actually have multiple ways of solving this. A lot of people talk about microaggressions these days where we talk about micro accessibility that you could find different ways of making it easier for people to hear but what biggest issue is so we separate between the investment in capital and the investment in ongoing operations that you cannot simply put something in and expect it to work all the time. You constantly have to work with staff. You have to build it into your workflow of how you set it up. We have meetings, we talk about that there are different types of concerts and we set up templates for different types of concerts so that it's easier and more effective to say, oh, we've got a classical concert. This is how it needs to be set up in terms of the sound. This is a rock concert. This is a musical theater performance. This is a lecture. Each of them had this own requirements and as the staff understands those then they're able to more successfully set it up in time but so often if you don't do that it won't happen and oftentimes it'll be off. I remember Alan and Tilla at one point we had the meeting with when Juliet came in and the loop wasn't working. We ran back, we ran into where the drivers were and it was somehow, someone had changed the settings and no longer worked. It's an ongoing constant problem of making that happen and a big problem the same way that Ochinevra and Sue are talking about the difficulty of convincing audiologists how important it is to be a part of the action and be an advocate too or understand what's needed for people. On my side, we're constantly dealing with making sure that not only the staff, not only the people at the sound board but also the artists understand what the heck is going on. And yeah, just a couple of other examples that we have to deal with is I've got a classical concert and suddenly my director wants to have violins in the balcony to create this effect and call in response and go, well, we got to mic them. She says, well, no they don't. I mean, you know, and I said, well, these people that have hearing loss won't hear it. And she goes, well, they'll get 90% of the concert. And so one of the rules that we just set out as writers is that everybody has to hear everything. And that's just a different sort of, 90%, 95% isn't good enough. And it's kind of a new concept for people. And so we have that problem. We have the problem of everybody always constantly checking out and knowing that you have a house mix, you have a monitor mix and you have a hearing assistance mix. And they're not the same thing. And somehow protecting against for a mic staff to protect against an artist who comes in and likes the hall, man, I'm gonna go natural. So they step in front of their mics and start playing just without any reinforcement into the house. I mean, things that's so cool, but the people with hearing loss don't hear it. And so I tell my guide, have you anticipated this? Have you picked it up? And now they're used to putting in area mics that can pick up and deal with such problems when they arise. Anyway, so I totally reinforced what you're saying, Steve, about that. And that's a part of it that we need to go out there and retrain people who are running these things. The half of their job is to capture the sound correctly. Thanks, James. So I didn't want to interrupt anybody because this discussion has been so great today. Nobody else has their hand up. We have a few other announcements. So I'd like to move on to that part of our program today. And of these announcements, I'm gonna skip through them. We have a, the walk for hearing is coming up shortly. And we have a small video that I've created for the walk for hearing that I want everybody to see. Oh, Alan, it won't let me optimize the video clip. Do you know why? Well, we'll see what happens. Click the sound one. Yeah, and this particular slide, I think really dovetails right into what Jim was talking about, if we just change this to ask for what you need on the bottom and say communication access is really, everyone gets the message. Here's our video, let's hope it starts. Okay, so I took this out of order to go ahead and maybe be able to get everything here in the last few minutes. Let's see if we can. Okay, HLA convention is coming up here on July 29th through the 23rd. I'm very happy to let all of you know here that Sherry Parazoli and I won the HLAA get in the hearing loop award for 2023 for our work on the get in the hearing loop advocacy and handbook and toolkit. Our upcoming events are May 6th. Sherry Parazoli is gonna come back and she's gonna talk to us about advocacy, hearing loop advocacy efforts on the national level and also in Washington state. So we're hoping to keep the momentum going here. On June the 3rd, we have the walk for hearing. At the end of June, we have the convention. In July, we're gonna have a brown bag picnic. And in August, we're having a presentation about hearing restoration using brain stimulation technology. We have a YouTube channel. If you'd like to watch this presentation again, please go to our channel. If you know someone else who might benefit from it, it will be available there. Most of our chapter meetings for the last 18 months are on the channel. We'd like to remind everybody that we are a membership organization. And even though you're not required to be a member to attend our meetings because they're open to the public, we always welcome you and appreciate your membership. We actually have an advocacy committee and I'm the chair and all of you hear me over and over again asking for you all to come help me. I hope that Genevra and Sue's presentation maybe will stimulate some of you to reach out and email me and say, okay, I'm really ready now. What can I do to help you? Zoher Chibber runs our programs committee and there are about five of us on it now. We always welcome additional people to come and it's really nice when we all have unique perspectives because we wanna see different programming. Where should you have communication access? Everywhere. So there are people in this meeting today who aren't from California and they may be wondering why the logo all the way to the right in the middle is there. That's the symbol for places of worship. And that's there because the ADA didn't excluded places of worship but California Unruh Act includes all businesses. So for us, it would include places of worship as well even though in other parts of the country advocates have been very successful getting hearing loops in places of worship. And here's our information if you'd like to get ahold of us. We would like to thank our captioner today. You make these meetings so that we can all attend them and it's easy to participate. And in California, we now have this new California RCC program. If you have a meeting that's three people or more you can get free captions through the state. So does anybody have any last minute messages, stories that they'd like to tell us in the last few minutes before we go ahead and close for today? Announcements, good news. Once again, thanks, Geneva and Sue. Thanks James for your expertise on being the executive director for the shed and using the mixing boards and things. Thanks Sherry for coming. Thank you everybody. See you next month. Okay, thank you.