Show me a church that accommodates deaf people. They don't, but it's not that they don't want to, it's that they're not aware of their problem.
According to a 2011 study led by Johns Hopkins researchers and published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, 20.3 percent of Americans have hearing loss in at least one ear. Consequently, worshippers with hearing issues often struggle to follow the sermon, says Cindy Aitken, the owner of All Access Captions, a Chattanooga-based company hoping to extend real-time transcription support to church services.At most churches, the needs of physically disabled congregants are accounted for from the parking lot to the pew, but thanks to a lack of accommodation, parishioners who struggle with hearing loss may feel as forsaken as Job.
According to a 2011 study led by Johns Hopkins researchers and published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, 20.3 percent of Americans have hearing loss in at least one ear. Consequently, worshippers with hearing issues often struggle to follow the sermon, says Cindy Aitken, the owner of All Access Captions, a Chattanooga-based company hoping to extend real-time transcription support to church services.
"If you picture one out of every five people sitting on the church pew not getting the message, that's concerning to me," Aitken says. "I think it really ought to concern pastors."
Aitken's company offers captioning via off-site transcriptionists, who listen to an event's audio feed. Using special software that supports a typed version of shorthand, the transcriptionist sends a text version that can be read on a website - and hence on a computer, tablet or smartphone - after a three- or four-second delay.
Like many captioning services, All Access predominantly works with educational institutions, which are required under the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 to accommodate the needs of hearing-impaired students. According to the ADA, religious organizations are exempt from compliance. Despite that legal status, however, many churches voluntarily accommodate the physically disabled.
Meanwhile, Aitken says, the needs of hearing-impaired worshippers often end up being overlooked, which can make Sunday morning devotionals a frustrating experience.
"There are a lot of [captioning] agencies out there that work with schools, and I feel like that niche is pretty well covered, whereas the church niche is not," she says. "It needs covering.
"What's the point of going to church and sitting there watching the guy's mouth move when you can't hear? So people drop out, but they would love to come to church and worship. They miss that - they need that in their lives - but what's the point?"
When Aitken founded All Access in October 2014, she was anxious to begin fulfilling hard-of-hearing churchgoers' needs by providing captions from sermons and programs that can be viewed discretely on a worshiper's mobile device or displayed on a screen for the entire congregation. Despite enthusiastically reaching out to local pastors, however, she says she has secured only one contract with any churches and continues to rely on contracts with universities to pay her bills.
At least a few pastors, however, have expressed interest in using her captioning service.
Christ United Methodist Senior Pastor Mark Flynn says he was excited at the potential of Aitken's service to make his sermons more widely accessible. Last week, he says, the church council at Christ United agreed to investigate captioning as part of the church's long-term plans.
"We're in the business of communication and almost everything we do, if you're deaf or hard of hearing, you get left out," Flynn says. "We put hymn words up on the screen and Scripture words, but that comprises so little of an average worship service. Accessibility is not just about physical handicapped parking places and ramps and things like that.
"I love the thought [of captioning]. It's hard not to."
David Harrison is a 79-year-old former pastor from St. Paul, Minn., who moved to Chattanooga in the early 1980s. He is also completely deaf in his right ear and has lost 80 percent of the hearing in his left.
Harrison was once a member at Highland Park Baptist Church, but says he stopped attending in 1995 after finding himself unable to follow the sermon or to participate in Sunday school classes.
"I couldn't hear enough, and they didn't have assistive devices," Harrison says during a recent phone call conducted via a captioning telephone on his end. "I got so frustrated because nobody knew what to do. They said, 'Well, we'll just yell louder,' and I said, 'Yelling louder isn't the answer for the hard of hearing.'"
In 2006, Harrison spent two weeks fasting and praying in an effort to resolve the conflict between his compromised hearing and his religious devotion. He says he subsequently "found my mission in life" as a certified hearing loss support specialist after completing an online course offered through the American Academy of Hearing Loss Support Specialists.
In 2013, Harrison and his wife, Cathy, created the hearing loss support and advocacy nonprofit Let My People Hear. Earlier this year, he was introduced to Aitken, and he says her interest in bringing captioning into the sanctuary was the answer he'd long sought.
On June 12, Harrison will begin leading a small group class following the morning sermon at The Access Church on Access Road between Hixson Pike and Highway 153. His class will specifically target hard-of-hearing churchgoers, and both it and the morning service will feature live transcription provided by All Access Captions.
"I've been praying for 10 years for a place to set up a ministry for the hearing impaired," Harrison says. "The Lord is doing something big [by introducing me to Aitken]."
Contact Casey Phillips at cphillips@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6205. Follow him on Twitter at @PhillipsCTFP.