Fairplain Presbyterian Church tries to be as welcoming as possible for people with all kinds of needs.
We currently provide the following accommodations for those with mobility, visual, auditory, memory loss needs, those who have experienced common types of personal trauma, trans or non-binary people, and parents of small children.
If you have other accessibility needs, please contact us and we will try to do what we can to make our worship services as welcoming as possible for you!
Mobility Needs
- Our building has seven wheelchair-accessible parking spaces.
- All levels except the chancel area and a few unused classrooms are wheelchair-accessible via our elevator.
- We have three wheelchair-accessible restrooms.
Visual Needs
- The order of service in our regular bulletins are printed in 14-point Google Open Sans font on 8.5×14″ paper.
- We also offer 18-point font larger-print bulletins. Image: Regular bulletin (left) on top of 8.5×11 paper, next to large-print bulletin.
Auditory Needs
- We have t-coil / telecoil capability.
- We use PowerPoint to project the lyrics to songs, the text of scripture verses, and the words to prayers and most of our liturgy, including major sermon points, on a large screen in a large (40-point) font.
- Non-preset parts of our service are auto-captioned in real time by Microsoft PowerPoint, which seems to be about 95% accurate. You can see it in action on our service streaming page.
Memory Loss
- We provide name tags and ask members of our congregation to wear them.
- Signs throughout the building indicate the name of the church and where to find places.
Gender Identity
Fairplain’s three wheelchair-accessible restrooms are available to persons of all genders.
Personal Trauma
- When Rev. Schell is preaching on a topic or scripture passage he knows is likely to cause a victim of trauma to re-experience a traumatic event, he will include a content warning in the PowerPoint, like the one below, which will also be read, so you can decide for yourself if you wish to engage with the sermon or not.
Parents of Small Children
- We love the noises children make in worship, but if you find your small child distracts you more than you would like, or if you just need a break during worship and Sunday School, our nursery attendant would be delighted to keep an eye on them for you.
