ADA News Forum - Updated often
Information Written or Gathered by Joseph
De Buglio
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ADA Posting Feb. 1999
New ADA Laws May Close Churches--Fall
1999
The Americans with Disabilities
Act (ADA)
was signed into law on July 26,
1990. This
Act gives full-fledged citizens
legal protections
that ensure them equal opportunity
and access
to the mainstream of American
life.
The ADA covers the estimated
28 million people
who suffer from hearing loss
(includes over
3 million school-age children).
"Assembly areas with fixed
seating where
audible communications are integral
to the
use of the space must have a
permanently
installed assistive listening
system if they
accomodate at least 50 persons,
or if they
have audio-amplification systems.
The minimum
number of receivers to be provided
shall
be equal to 4 percent of the
total number
of seats, but in no case less
than two."
Information provided courtesy
of Sound Choice
Assistive Listening, Inc. Doylestown,
PA
The HIS System Standard vs. ADA
Standards
and Laws
(c) By Joseph De Buglio
For many of those in the church sound community,
they know that this web site has been trying
to educate the various church communities
about church sound, church acoustics and
in that context, teaching that churches can
comply to a sound and acoustics standard
they should write for themselves. We have
been suggesting that churches and Denominations
adopt the HIS System Standard or write their
own standards - as it was over 100 years
ago for acoustics.
Recently, it has be brought to
my attention
that a standard for church sound
may be forced
onto the church community in
1999. The ADA
(Americans with Disabilities
Act) has already
required for new churches to
provide assistive
hearing system for a few years
now. To their
astonishment, they have been
receiving many
complaints from both users and
sellers of
assistive hearing system (AHS).
Most of the
complaints come from either poor
quality
equipment in front of AHS, really
poor acoustical
conditions or poorly designed
systems where
speakers are placed where it
interferes with
the AHS a person wears. To address
this problem,
board members who created the
ADA laws are
meeting to discuss revision of
a new version
of the bill that will be pass
by congress
later in 1999.
If this bill is passed, depending
on how
it is worded, it could mean the
closure of
churches until they meet the
ADA standard.
What is not being said is if
the ADA will
accommodate churches needs for
longer reverberation
times. At this time, the board
is looking
at low noise standards, speech
to noise ratios
and speech to reverberation ratios.
What
is also not clear is if these
standards will
be retroactive and if it is,
how much time
will churches be given to comply.
Churches are unique in their
sound needs.
The ADA standards are believed
to apply from
school classrooms, lecture halls,
concert
halls, school gyms and to all
public gathering
places. This standard could also
apply to
Bars and Clubs. If this is the
case, those
standards may be such that it
will restrict
how churches can conduct their
worship services.
Even OSHA is looking at sound
levels in some
churches, suggesting limiting
the loudness
of the sound system. This is
a first step
in big brother moving into churches
from
the back door.
The HIS System Standard already
exceed the
ADA current standard and I am
confident that
it will meet the 1999 standard.
However,
when it come to Reverberation
time, a Sound
Inspector could deem the HIS
System Standard
void by the interpretation of
the inspector
of the ADA regulations.
There are two ways to measure
the Speech
to Reverberation ratio. A simple
method just
looks at the RT60 and if it exceeds
a certain
time interval, it could be viewed
as a room
that fails to meet the ADA standard.
However,
if the signal to noise ratio
is greater than
25dB, an RT60 over the ADA standard
is possible
and meets all of the other requirements
for
ideal listening conditions while
giving a
church a broader flexibility
in acoustical
conditions for the various styles
of worship
churches practice.
It is our belief that if the
church community
can come up with their own standard
to comply
with the ADA standard, the ADA
board may
allow churches certain leeway.
If the church
community does not make an effort
to address
this issue then we shouldn't
be surprised
if Sound Police start shutting
down churches
in the year 2000. While Sound
Police may
seem far fetched, a new church
that will
have to meet the ADA standard
can double
the cost. A $500,000 church today
can cost
over 1 million and a 2 million
dollar church
becomes a 4 million dollar church.
The ADA is actually a good law
when it passes.
Passing it without input from
the church
community can set churches back
50 years
and every church seating over
1500 people
could be closed over night. Don't
let this
happen.
Please pass this message on the
others.
Joe De Buglio R. E.
Audio and Acoustical Practitioner
e-mail jdbsound@echo-on.net
Update May 1999
Americans With Disabilities Act
Can We Call
It Code?
Comments form NSCA May 1999
Contractors have long sought
relief from
post-installation litigation
involving ADA
compliance, but have been thwarted
by the
fact that there has been little
opportunity
to obtain ADA approval for a
particular design
before going ahead with building
and installation.
This dilemma stems from the fact
that the
ADA is essentially civil rights
legislation,
not building code.
The Access Board has been working
to certify
local codes for ADA compliance
and thereby
preclude a lot of post facto
litigation.
However, the nine-step certification
process
that the Access Board has undertaken
is painfully
slow.
At this time, Washington, Texas,
Florida,
and now Maine, state codes are
certified.
Pending certification are codes
for New York
City, Utah, New Mexico, Minnesota,
New Jersey,
Maryland, California, the Village
of Oak
Park, IL, and the County of Hawaii.
Of particular
interest is that New York is
the only state
with written standards for large
area FM
assistive listening systems-the
New York
codes address operation of both
the transmitter
and the receiver.
The Access Board is also working
on writing
"Model Codes" that
spell out the
standards more clearly and from
a more practical
perspective. The goal is to have
as much
technical consistency as possible
among federal
and private sector standards.
However, when
it comes to code setting, it
seems to be
a race of slow versus slower
to see who can
take the longest to forge ADA
regulations
into usable code.
ADA Tax Incentives
May 1999
Systems contractors have the
opportunity
to be the first to tell their
clients about
a little known tax break for
adding or upgrading
assistive listening equipment
to their venue.
The IRS offers two tax incentives
to help
cover the cost of making access
improvements.
A tax credit of up to $5,000
is available
to small businesses for the cost
of adapting
existing facilities to ADA standards.
The
tax credit is 50 percent of expenses
up to
$10,250. A tax deduction of up
to $15,000
is also available for any size
business for
bringing its building into ADA
compliance.
(A tax credit is subtracted from
your tax
liability after you calculate
your taxes,
while a tax deduction is subtracted
from
your total income before taxes).
Both the tax credit and deduction
are available
annually. For more information,
call 800.514.0301.
Request the Tax Incentives Packet
on the
ADA.
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