Buffalo Non-Profit Legal Services Organization Empowered with Conferencing Capabilities from ClearOne

ABOUT THE LEGAL AID BUREAU OF BUFFALO

Established in 1912 and serving more than 20,000 individuals annually, the Legal Aid Bureau of Buffalo is the largest and oldest provider of indigent legal services in Western New York. Their mission is to provide access to justice and due process to the most vulnerable individuals, children, and families through quality legal representation and assistance.

Their Civil Legal Services Unit provides a range of holistic services to help domestic violence victims, abused and neglected children, children facing a range of challenges in obtaining equal access to education, veterans, formerly incarcerated individuals, victims of workplace abuse, immigrants and refugees, persons with disabilities, homeowners facing wrongful foreclosures, individuals with mental illness and other vulnerable Western New Yorkers. 

CHALLENGES

The Legal Aid Bureau of Buffalo has a large, uniquely-shaped meeting room, which they wanted to use for training, board meetings, presentations, and audio/video conferencing. Rather than requiring everyone to travel there, in person, to attend meetings, they wanted a conferencing system that allowed everyone to “be” there. Other than a monitor and a computer, the room had no tech. So, enabling these capabilities was a big step. A relatively low ceiling and irregular shape of the walls presented some additional challenges. Further complicating the installation was the existing audio characteristics of the room, which was a noisy area with additional sound and vibration caused by the HVAC system.

THE CLEARONE SOLUTION IMPLEMENTED BY VERAVIEW

This was Veraview’s first installation of ClearOne’s patented BMA CT Beamforming Mic Array Ceiling Tile.

The BMA CT proved to be the perfect solution for the room. It performed well in overcoming the room’s acoustical challenges and was esthetically pleasing. Its form factor was ideal, given the room’s low ceiling. Meeting participants can be clearly heard, even if moving freely about the room, and can sit/stand in any location without compromising audio quality.

Using the BMA CT and the CONVERGE® Pro 2 DSP mixer, the team at Versaview was able was able mitigate the issues caused by the noisy HVAC system and provide crystal clear audio quality, even for conferencing sessions with 20-30 participants in the room.

O’Leary also specified the Unite 150 PTZ cameras in the 20X20 conference room, citing their unparalleled versatility as a key element. Supporting USB 3.0 or 2.0 interfaces, it’s compatible with popular applications such as COLLABORATE® Space, Microsoft® Teams, Zoom, WebEx, GoToMeeting, Spontania and more.

The Unite 150 cameras also feature full HD video quality with 1080p video, 12x optical zoom for close-up views and a 73-degree wide-angle view to capture all participants across the entire conference room. 

"This was the first BMA CT we did.  Looks great, works nicely.  Big plus is they have a noisy area and it does a great job in taking that noise out."  - Brian O'Leary, Account Executive at Veraview, the AV Systems Integrator that installed the ClearOne solution.