In some settings, loop systems are the only feasible assistive listening systems. When ordering food at a drive-up order station, when buying a ticket from someone on the other side of a glass window, or when talking with one’s pharmacist or bank teller at a drive-up window, there won’t be assistive listening units available for check out. One hears or one doesn’t (and sometimes hearing is crucial).
Nearly all such venues, whether indoors or outdoors, can now be looped. Telecoil-equipped hearing aid wearers, for example, need only hit their T switch while ordering at a fast food station or subway kiosk and, voila!, the clerk’s voice will broadcast directly through one’s hearing aids, right inside the car. At a subway station, bank teller station, or movie theater ticket window, one may stand on a looped pad that broadcasts the clerk’s voice directly into one’s head. For example, London Underground ticket offices are looped. All London taxis are looped. So are 11,500 British Post Office Ltd. branches.