Holland
District Court Judge Hannes Meyers sees a day when his courtroom is
wired for sound, but not just the recording kind.
Rather, Meyers thinks the time is right for the district court to
make it easier for those who need to listen as Ottawa County and
Holland city officials are on the verge of beginning construction of
a new police-court complex.
After attending a Saturday informational session on
induction-looped systems, a form of amplification that helps the
hearing-impaired hear clearly through their listening aids, Meyers
thinks the relatively new technology could be used in courtrooms.
"The first thing I thought of was juries and how it could help
them hear every word," Meyers said, adding many courtrooms have poor
acoustics. "Everything within a jury case is so important and if you
can't hear a witness, a prosecutor, a defense attorney or the judge,
that's going to affect the process.
"The concept is really significant and one that is certainly
something we have to look at and will."
Hope College professor David Myers recently began a local
campaign to wire churches, schools and other public facilities with
the looping system. Myers discovered the hearing technology several
years ago while in the United Kingdom, where it is used prominently,
and thought someone needed to try to bring the system here.
"It's like experiencing a whole new world of listening," Myers
said. "I was almost in tears of joy, its sound was so clear. It's
almost like your head is at the podium."
In fact, the technology basically does put listeners at a podium
at a public event because of a magnetic field which surrounds a
wired room, according to Leon Pieters, an expert who helped develop
the looping system and is now the managing director of Ampertronic
Ltd., the world leader in looping system manufacturing.
Pieters said the sound of the microphone goes into an amplifier
which then drives an electronic current through a cable. The cable
is run around the floor or ceiling of a room and creates a field
which puts the signal directly in a person's hearing aid and blocks
out ambient noise.
"If you take 20 people with hearing loss, you'll have 20
different types of loss and not one other mechanism can help all 20
people," Pieters said. "This can."
The key to the system is a tele-coil, or T-coil, already in many
hearing aids and adaptable to those without.
Myerssays the Holland and Zeeland area can become a national
leader by supporting the system's installation in local facilities.
He said looping here is not nearly as commonplace as it is in
Scotland and other countries.
"This is just too cool not to be implemented in the U.S.," he
said.
