Deaf Alerter for staff safety
The Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew (Kew Gardens) is a fascinating home to beautiful botanical collections from all over the world.
Situated in southwest London, Kew Gardens is a UNESCO World Heritage Site that includes over 50,000 living plants as well as over seven million dried specimens in its Herbarium.
Private gardens have existed at Kew since the 16th century and have steadily grown in size since then. Today, the gardens span 300 acres. The site incorporates numerous buildings including the Herbarium and several laboratories.
Many parts of Kew Gardens are open to the public, some to academic visitors, and others to staff only.
The Challenge
Kew Gardens employs several staff members who are Deaf or hard of hearing.
It was looking for a notification system to alert these staff members if a fire alarm was sounding, to allow them to work safely and independently across their working locations.
The solution would need to be installed in several buildings where Deaf or hard of hearing colleagues worked.
It would also be useful to have the potential for easy expansion into further buildings in the future.
The Solution
The solution provided to Kew Gardens was the installation of our Deaf Alerter system across several buildings, including the iconic Herbarium building.
Deaf Alerter is a radio-based emergency fire alarm and messaging system. It works by being integrated with a current fire alarm system via a relay interface, which will activate the Deaf Alerter transmitter on fire alarm activation and transmit a radio signal across the entire building.
A notification will be sent to any handheld ‘Alerter’ devices in that building; the user doesn’t need to connect or register to pick up this signal on their device.
The devices will vibrate strongly to notify the carrier that a fire alarm is sounding, and will display the text ‘FIRE ALARM’ on the screen. The vibration continues for as long as the fire alarm is active, giving equal and equivalent warning to the audible fire alarm.
The Deaf Alerter system is radio-based and uses a national roaming system. It can be installed in various buildings, even across different sites. People carrying Alerter devices will be able to receive a message in any building in which the system is in place by simpy entering that building with their Alerter. No registration or building designated equipment is necessary, making Deaf Alerter a flexible and simple solution for the end user.
The Result
Kew Gardens opted for coverage in specific buildings where Deaf staff members worked, with the option to expand to further buildings across the site in future.
Door stickers were supplied for the buildings covered by Deaf Alerter so that staff would know where communication would be received via their Alerter devices.
The team at Kew Gardens is now assured that they have a fully compliant system in place in the specified buildings to support Deaf and hard of hearing staff members in the event of a fire.
