19 May RNID and Contacta team up at Cotswold village hall

Shurdington Community Centre, situated south of Cheltenham in a Cotswolds village, holds a capacity of 300 in the main hall and has 3 meeting rooms. The hall accommodates a preschool and hosts baby and toddler clubs, exercise classes, Parish Council meetings, a health clinic and many more groups and societies.

With the hall in use for such a variety of classes and accommodating people of all ages, the community centre committee approached the Royal National Institute for Deaf People (RNID) in March 2020 for advice on assistive listening solutions to ensure their community centre was accessible for all.

Contacta supported the RNID in identifying the exact requirements for their customer, by surveying the site to record all the necessary data. With this data, along with details from the RNID’s initial consultation the RNID were able to specify the right equipment. Ensuring they had accounted for the likely needs of the service users and the limitations that the proposed solution may present.

The RNID and Contacta specified 3 perimeter hearing loops to provide excellent coverage across all rooms. Contacta’s large area hearing loops deliver music and speech with complete clarity to multiple hearing instrument wearers, enabling them to hear clearly and easily in noisy environments or when the sound source is too far away.

In April and May 2021 Contacta engineers installed the systems on site, fitting the loop cables at a high level in the loft space. One of the rooms is used as a pre-school, meaning this visit had to be schedule for the school holidays, so as not to cause any disruption.

The RNID advised the customer that with perimeter loops there is a potential for overspill. To overcome the issue, Contacta added an isolation switch on each loop so the client can switch them off depending on which loop is required. Through this design consideration the RNID were able to ensure the customers’ expectations regarding performance were managed and achieved.

The 3 large area hearing loops are powered by a V15 hearing loop driver in the Century Hall and Millennium Hall, and a V7 hearing loop driver in the Sobey Suite. Both the V15 and V7 are constant current, single output hearing loop drivers, with Class-D technology built around an advanced DSP core. Perfect for small and medium facilities and venues.

The Shurdington Community Centre committee are very pleased with the result of the installation and service provided by both the RNID and Contacta. They have expressed interest in protecting their initial investment by ensuring that their systems are professionally maintained by accredited installers once every year.