Cyrus-fan mom sounds off

PROVO — Looks like locking down tickets to this year's sold-out Stadium of Fire, featuring Disney star Miley Cyrus, is just step one for people who have a hearing impairment.

Step two would be making sure an assistive listening device is available.

One woman, whose 12-year-old daughter has a severe hearing impairment, wrote to the U.S. Department of Justice, saying LaVell Edwards Stadium is out of compliance with Americans with Disabilities Act standards because it doesn't have a permanent assistive listening system in place.

"Brigham Young University is discriminating against my daughter," Layton resident Lareen Strong wrote, "as well as every hearing impaired person who goes to an event at LaVell Edwards Stadium."

BYU spokeswoman Carri Jenkins said the stadium can accommodate any hearing-impaired patron if advance notice is given.

Strong said the day before tickets went on sale for Stadium of Fire — the main event of America's Freedom Festival at Provo — she called LaVell Edwards Stadium to see if there's a certain section where the assistive listening system would work best for her daughter, a "huge" Cyrus fan. An assistive listening device acts as an amplifier that channels sound directly into the wearer's eardrum.

Stadium staff passed Strong from person to person five times.

"They didn't know what I was talking about," she said.

The next day, a stadium staff member told Strong somebody would go to Salt Lake City to pick something up for her daughter. That solution didn't assuage Strong's concerns.

"I was completely appalled," she said.

According to ADA standards, Strong said, any assembly area that accommodates more than 50 people should have a permanently installed assistive listening system that provides receivers equal to 4 percent of the total number of seats. Meaning LaVell Edwards Stadium, which seats about 65,000, should have 2,600 receivers on hand.

The paragraph of ADA standards Strong refers to doesn't specifically mention stadiums, and another paragraph of the ADA standards states, "Departures from particular technical and scoping requirements of this guideline ... are permitted where the alternative designs and technologies used will provide substantially equivalent or greater access."

Jenkins said she doesn't think the stadium is out of compliance with ADA standards because they can provide assistive listening devices so long as they receive advance notice.

"We can absolutely 100 percent accommodate her need for a listening device," she said.