Summary
The federal judiciary's requirements for designing and renovating US federal courthouses, including assistive listening, microphones and acoustic privacy in courtrooms and jury rooms.
Key findings
- Requires that people who are deaf or hard of hearing be accommodated and that assistive listening systems be provided under the Architectural Barriers Act standards, and says accommodations beyond those requirements "will likely be necessary", such as a sound-reinforcement system or a sign language interpreter.
- For the jury assembly area, recommends permanently installed assistive listening controls and emitters integrated with the sound system, says an induction loop may be considered and should then be engineered with the technology infrastructure, and asks for a self-contained portable system for trial jury suites and other places without a sound system.
- For the grand jury hearing room, says a wireless infrared system "provides the flexibility and privacy needed", that windows call for caution to avoid interference with the infrared signal, and that the emitters must reach the whole room by line of sight. Grand jury suites should have no windows or, if they do, opaque shades.
- Says multitrack systems in the grand jury hearing room can be used for assisted listening, simultaneous translation and confidential recordings.
- Asks for microphones at the grand jury foreperson's station and the witness box, controlled by the court reporter, a microphone for any interpreter connected to the room's amplification and recording system, and one at the U.S. attorney station or lectern.
- Names speech intelligibility and acoustic privacy as the two key acoustic factors in a courthouse, says good sound-system design cannot make up for poor room acoustics, and asks sound enhancement systems in courtrooms and jury rooms to give a Speech Transmission Index of at least 0.75.
- Classes courtrooms, trial jury suites and grand jury hearing rooms as confidential spaces for acoustic privacy, with localized sound masking in the public space next to jury rooms.
Limits
Applies to federal courthouses. It names infrared but sets no performance figures for assistive listening systems and does not mention Bluetooth or Auracast; the detailed audiovisual requirements are in a separate Courtroom Technology Audiovisual Infrastructure Manual, which was not read. Revised March 2021.
Read the original
www.uscourts.gov/sites/default/files/u.s._courts_design_guide_2021.pdf
Cited in
- What works in courtrooms, council chambers and other meeting rooms where speech must be heard by all and kept in the room?Partly answered
Cite this source
Judicial Conference of the United States. U.S. Courts Design Guide (revised 2021). United States Courts (uscourts.gov). March 2021. https://www.uscourts.gov/sites/default/files/u.s._courts_design_guide_2021.pdf (accessed 9 October 2026).
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