By the time I ask whether your loop is on, I've already worked out what happens if it isn't

That's the bit venues never see.

Before a deaf person asks the question, they've run the whole thing through. Whether they'll be understood asking it. Whether the person behind the counter will get flustered. Whether the queue is now watching. Whether there's any point - given the last three places said yes and were wrong.

Most people run that calculation and decide not to ask. You record no demand - and you conclude there isn't any.

So this is what a hearing loop actually is, how you find out whether yours works, and why the sign on your door might be doing more harm than no sign at all.

What a hearing loop is

A hearing loop, or induction loop, is a wire around a space that turns sound into a magnetic field. A hearing aid switched to its T setting picks that field up directly.

The point isn't volume. It's that the sound arrives without the room attached to it.

If you have normal hearing, your brain separates a voice from a hard foyer, a coffee machine and forty other conversations. A hearing aid is much worse at that, because it amplifies everything it's given. A loop skips the room entirely - it sends the microphone straight to the aid. That's why "just speak up" doesn't work, and why a louder voice in an echoing space makes things worse rather than better.

This sits alongside the wider Auditory domain, which covers alarms and acoustics as well. A loop is also the quieter half of the auditory problem. The louder half is whether I know the building is being evacuated. Telecoil is also the only assistive technology that works in the hearing aid somebody already owns. No app, no borrowing a receiver, no asking. That matters later.

The sign is a promise, and it's the one most often broken

The usual finding in my work isn't that a building has no loop. It's that it has a loop - and nobody has tested it.

Think about what that sign does before anybody arrives. A loop symbol on your website is why somebody chose you over the place down the road. They planned the day around it. They spent the energy in advance.

Arriving to find the amplifier off, the microphone pushed to the back of the counter, or the unit still in its box is worse than finding no sign - because no sign would have let them plan properly.

That's why a signed but non-functioning loop goes in my reports as a Priority 1. It's a total barrier presented as provision - and it defeats the thing the user did to protect themselves.

Two standards, and they answer different questions

People talk about loops being "to standard" without saying which one, and the two do completely different jobs.

BS 7594, the code of practice

It answers: should there be a system here, how should it be designed and installed, and who looks after it. It says induction loops should be designed and installed by a trained specialist rather than a general electrician, and it names the spaces that should be covered. Meeting and lecture rooms, theatres, cinemas, performance areas, lifts, help points, counters and reception areas.

BS EN 60118-4, the performance standard

It answers one question: does the field this system actually produces meet spec. Field strength, signal to noise, frequency response.

That second one is what matters when somebody insists their system is fine. A loop can be powered, signed and completely out of spec - and nobody in the building would know.

I'm not going to reprint the numbers from BS EN 60118-4 here. It's a licensed standard - I'm not going to quote figures from a vendor blog, and anybody specifying a system needs the actual document rather than my summary of it. What you need to know without buying anything is this: a certified commissioning test to BS EN 60118-4 is the only thing that proves a loop works. Not a sign, not an indicator light, not somebody's memory of an installer.

What the law asks of you

Three things, and they stack.

The Equality Act 2010 duty to make reasonable adjustments covers auxiliary aids, and EHRC guidance names an induction loop as an example of exactly that. The duty is anticipatory - so it's owed to the deaf customer who hasn't arrived yet rather than only to the one who has already complained.

Approved Document M requires a hearing enhancement system where one is needed, including at reception points and in meeting and performance spaces. A reception counter with a glazed screen is the classic trigger.

BS 8300-2 gives the detail, and it contains the sentence I quote most often. Maintenance is a specialist job, covering reactive and preventative work, and staff should be trained to test the system themselves using appropriate metering equipment. Almost nobody does that - and it's directly citable when they haven't.

How to find out whether yours works

You don't need me for most of this.

Start with the sign. Is there one, does it say which area is covered, and is it left over from a system that was removed years ago? An unmarked coverage boundary means somebody has to guess where to stand while being served - which is its own small load.

Then ask whoever is on the desk four questions, and write down what they say. Can you show me how to turn the loop on. How do you know it's working today. When was it last tested, and by whom. Who do you call if it fails.

The answers are the finding. And to be clear about where that finding sits: "I don't know" from the person on the desk isn't their failure. They were never shown. That belongs to the organisation - and it should be written that way.

Then check the physical system. Is the amplifier powered and showing input. Is the microphone live and at the counter, or pushed aside. Are the cables connected, because an unplugged input is one of the most common faults there is. Is it switched to the right source.

Then ask for the test certificate and its date. No certificate and no test record doesn't mean the loop is absent and it doesn't mean it's compliant. The correct finding is untested - and that word does a lot of work in a report.

The 400mm problem

Here's the one a single-domain checklist will never find.

A counter loop is specified for somebody standing. The microphone is positioned for a standing customer's head. The counter is built at standing height. There's often glazing as well.

I arrive sitting roughly 400mm below all of it. Below the microphone's best pickup, and out of the sightline I need to lipread as a fallback when the loop lets me down.

Every one of those elements passes its own check. The counter passes. The loop passes. The screen passes. Together they exclude - and no individual measurement would ever have caught it.

Auracast, and please do not rip the loop out

Bluetooth LE Audio broadcast, branded Auracast, is now really here. Bristol Temple Meads ran the first public trial in a transport environment anywhere in the world, completed in July 2025. Brighton station got the first permanent Auracast installation at a UK railway station, launched in July 2026. Theatres have been moving too.

It's genuinely good technology - and I'm glad it's coming.

If you're installing it, run it alongside your induction loop. Don't decommission the loop.

That's not me being sentimental about old kit. It's that NHS-supplied hearing aids run a generation or two behind commercial models, so the people most dependent on venue-provided access are the least likely to own an Auracast-capable aid for some years yet. Telecoil works in the aid somebody already has - today, with no purchase.

Taking the loop out in favour of Auracast moves the cost of the upgrade onto disabled people, and hardest onto the ones with the least money. That's a decision about who your building is for, not a decision about audio.

What the loop is really measuring

Whether a loop is tested tells you whether deaf customers are thought of as real, expected customers or as a box that got ticked during a fit-out.

So does whether staff are trained - and so does what you decide to do when Auracast arrives.

And when the loop fails, the alternative offered is almost always a phone number. In health and social care that is a named failure under the Accessible Information Standard. For a profoundly deaf customer that's not a lesser option. It's the end of the transaction. If you haven't decided what you offer instead, you haven't thought about the failure at all.