Listen Technologies Offers Courses for Architects on ADA and CBC Guidelines for Serving the Hearing Disabled

Listen Technologies Corporation, the designer, manufacturer, and distributor of assistive listening products for over 16 years, has made it an ongoing priority to offer contractors, system integrators, consultants, architects, and venue owners the most up-to-date resources on how to best serve those requiring assistive listening. These resources explore and clarify guidelines and recommendations set forth by institutions and legislative efforts including the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), the California Building Code (CBC), the Accessibility of Ontarians with Disability Act, and other related measures. Compliance with these guidelines is not only mandatory and legally enforced, but a clear moral imperative; however, many professionals, although well-meaning, let certain considerations in regard to hearing disability fall through the cracks when designing new structures or updating existing facilities. A new set of courses offered by Listen is specifically designed to educate architects on ADA and CBC recommendations, offering credits for American Institute of Architects (AIA) certification in the process.

Listen Technologies has been approved to teach two courses, both earning (1) LU/HSW credit:
1. Course Title: ADA Assistive Listening Legislation
2. Course Title: California Building Code and The ADA Assistive Listening Legislation

Course objectives:
• Understand the impact of the new requirements of the ADA/CBC
• Understand the unique sound needs of the hard of hearing community
• Apply the ADA (or CBC, in California) to the welfare of people requiring assistive listening systems
• Recognize the technologies that can reconnect people to a positive experience in any venue

The courses are offered on an individual basis by Listen personnel at sites around the US. To inquire about a scheduled session or to set up a course date, please email sales@listentech.com. The company will also have the courses available as webinars at www.listentech.com.

For architects to remain certified through AIA, they are required to have 18 total learning units each year. Of these 18 required (LU) Learning Units, 12 of them must be in the category of Health, Safety, and Welfare (HSW). Listen has developed these courses (ADA and the CBC) along with their objectives, to align under HSW learning units. These courses offered by Listen are informative and educational in nature and talk about the "why" of hearing loss -- how many people have hearing loss, why hearing aids are not enough in a venue, what happens when people have hearing loss and what that is like -- and then goes into the ADA and CBC codes, which are actually fairly straightforward. They then address the different types of solutions offered by Listen and the pros/cons of each technology.

Cory Schaeffer, Listen Technologies vice president of business development, states, "Offering a presentation that provides AIA/HSW Learning Units to architects allows Listen to share our unique wealth of knowledge with this group of professionals. Often AV is the last 'trade' brought into a project, and for some assistive listening technologies that is way too late. These courses allow us to share information about hearing loss with architects and the fact that it's the largest disability covered under the ADA (17% compared to 1.4% requiring wheelchair access), as well as what the ADA and other building code requirements are and what technologies meet the code and the advantages/disadvantages of each technology. We know that once participating architects have completed these courses, more consideration will be made earlier in projects."

For more information on these courses and all other inquiries, please email sales@listentech.com.