Hearing loops in Europe, and with cochlear implants
It's not just hearing aid wearers that benefit from assistive listening via hearing loops, 
and it's not just the UK that has widely installed them. Writing from Denmark, the Rev. Jan Grýnberg Eriksen, then president of "Churchear, Denmark," noted that "Here we can just install a good loop system in a theater or a church building or any meeting room (and we do-our churches are almost 100 percent covered now), and ask hard of hearing attendees to switch to T-position."
A week ago, a woman with a cochlear implant e-mailed me excitedly:
My husband and I are travelling in Norway. We were lucky enough to get tickets for Swan Lake at the new Oslo Opera House. I noticed that it had been looped for T-coil. I flipped the switch on my processor, and the sound came in beautifully. This was stark contrast to a concert we went to at Avery Fisher Hall (Lincoln Center) in NYC the night before we left, where I borrowed an ALD which brought in mostly static. . . . When I get back, I'm going to bring this to the attention of the administration at Lincoln Center.
Today (as I write), she sent a follow-up note:
The induction loop is so common that there isn't always signage for it.
"All the churches have them," the organist at the Stavanger Cathedral told me yesterday. I haven't seen a sign in any church. I tested it out at the worship service this morning. Sure enough, when I switched on the T switch, the sound came in so clearly that I was sure I could have understood every word of the minister had she not been speaking Norwegian. . . . The sound quality was so good, I could get rhapsodic about it.
Then, a few hours later . . . how I love these e-mails . . . a woman from suburban Chicago wrote saying that their church had just been looped and that
I can certainly attest to the spread of the loop system in Michigan. Before we installed our system I telephoned a number of facilities listed by a loop vendor as having installed such a system. I was amazed to discover that not a single installed site had anything but vociferous praise for the product!!! One would expect at least one nay-sayer in a group that large (22). But there was not a single one!!!
E-mails quoted with permission.
Jun 26, 2009 at 2:24 PM It seems that we should order T-Coil for all of our senior clients who attend churches. Is it really the case that all churches are installed with loops?
Jun 27, 2009 at 11:57 AM Happily, most hearing aids are now coming with T-coils, for phone use if not for assisted listening. In the UK and much of Scandinavia most churches and cathedrals with PA systems do have hearing loops. As I explain in an earlier entry, there are now several hundred loop systems in west Michigan and in a number of other communities across the USA, thanks to local grassroots efforts. As yet, however, most Americans with hearing loss are unaware of this potential to double the functionality of their hearing aids, by enabling them to serve as wireless, customized loudspeakers (for home TV, as well as in various public venues).