I can’t hear you!

A special edition of our Click for Action eRotary Newsletter, to celebrate our work being undertaken by the Rotary Community Corps Let’s Loop Swindon Team

Lin, one of our RCC members, writes about her recent visit to have a coffee – “I’d like to share with you my experience at Costa in the West Swindon Centre this morning. It was really noisy in there, a lot of people chatting and all their machines were rattling and whooshing. I saw their portable loop on a shelf at the back of the counter and I spent a few minutes whilst waiting in the queue, wondering whether I should ask for it to be switched on. There were a few people in the queue behind me and even though my confidence has grown since joining Let’s Loop Swindon, I felt the same old feeling of should I ask and run the risk of the staff not knowing how to use the portable loop, or of it not working. Anyway, when it was my turn to be served, although I could guess what the barista was saying I couldn’t hear her because of the background noises, I bit the bullet and told her I couldn’t hear and asked if the loop could be switched on. She took the portable loop off the shelf and switched it on but then put it back on the shelf. I explained that it needed to be placed on the counter as it only had a short range. This she did and she then made sure she spoke directly towards it and her colleague who was at the till also spoke towards the loop. It worked really well and I could hear them both clearly. The staff members made no fuss over using the loop and I felt no embarrassment at all. And just to complete the experience, another of their colleagues carried the tray over the table. What a wonderful place!! I’ll certainly be going back there. Thank you Costa.”

Creating Public Demand

Lin’s example shows we need a lot more people to use Loop systems when they are in shopping centres and public buildings. Our next phase of Let’s Loop Swindon is to ask everyone, even those who can hear, to help us increase public demand for Loop Systems and to get know what they do, why they are needed and how they help. To find out more we are putting on a Launch and Awareness Event on the 25th February, 2015, please download the invitation and book your placeAwareness and Launch Event Booking.

Buying Food could be so much easier

Steve helping to undertake the audit of supermarkets

Steve our RCC volunteer who has become our Press Officer writes

Nearly two thirds of Swindon’s supermarkets have no hearing loops installed to support their hard-of-hearing customers. This is the key result of an audit conducted by volunteers of ‘Let’s Loop Swindon’, an organisation dedicated to improving the provision of inductive hearing loops. The survey’s ‘secret shoppers’ discovered that where loops are available they are generally working, but that signs pointing out loop availability can be very poor. In one case the sign was entirely hidden behind a display of sweets, because ‘there is nowhere else to put the sweets’.

Where there are looped tills, supermarkets often only have a few of their tills equipped with loops, but there is little evidence that managers prioritise these tills. In many instances volunteers found that the tills equipped with loops were not in operation.

This survey follows hot on the heels of a check of loop provision across the town’s pharmacies – which found that only 10 of 29 pharmacies checked had working loops.

Hearing loops providing a wireless signal which can be picked up by a hearing aid when it is set to the Telecoil (T setting). Hearing loops cut out exterior noise and ensure that a hearing aid wearer can hear without any confusion.

Let’s Loop Swindon plans to carry out further surveys in the New Year, and plans to help those who should provide loops, and those who would benefit from using the ‘T’ setting on their hearing aids, to make communication work where it matters – in the public and commercial premises of the town.

Another opportunity to learn more of what we do and help us raise some funds

The Let’s Loop Swindon project is a partnership of Voluntary Action Swindon, Swindon Borough Council, Swindon Equality Coalition, Zurich Community Trust, The National Trust, Click 4 Action eRotary and Hearing Link. Please share with friends and let’s us all help hearing in our communities to be a provision which is working and widely available.