New technology helps blind sports fans level up their arena experience
For sports fans who are blind or have low vision, it can be hard to experience the full excitement of a game without being able to see where the ball is or what the players are doing.
But a Seattle tech company is hoping to change that after creating the first tactile sports broadcast, transforming gameplay into trackable vibrations for visually impaired sports fans like Hank Vogel.
“I’m blind, but I don’t just see blackness,” said 11-year-old Hank. “Blindness does not mean blackness.”
Hank has aniridia, a rare, degenerative eye disease that caused him to be born without irises — the colored part of our eyes.
“It just means I can’t see as well as other people, so I can see, it’s just fuzzy,” he explained.
Hank reads large-print text, uses a monocular to see in the distance and a white cane to help him navigate when walking. And when he attends a basketball game, there’s the brand-new technology he can use.
“We’ve essentially developed a laptop-sized haptic display that’s capable of communicating dynamic information like sporting events through touch,” said Jerred Mace, the CEO and founder of OneCourt.
The technology uses real-time data that’s already collected by the NBA, using cameras installed in the catwalks of each arena that track the movements of every player on the court.
“So you can think of it like a normal screen, but instead of visual pixels, they’re tactile,” he said. “You can feel the motion of the player with the ball moving around the court in real time.”
The OneCourt device looks like a thicker, oversized iPad with a rubber mat that sits on top. The mat has a raised outline of the court, and Mace said users can track the action in a few ways.
“By placing their hands flat on the surface, you’re feeling those vibrations in your palms and your fingers, and you get a great sense of the location generally, but then you can use your fingertips to zoom in and really pick out some of those fine details,” he said.
For blind and low-vision sports fans, the tech could be a game changer to help them engage.
“[Studies show] patients with low vision, especially children, tend to participate less in social activities and tend to have lower quality-of-life scores,” said Alan Labrum, a low vision optometrist at Oregon Health & Science University’s Casey Eye Institute.
Labrum thinks a technology like OneCourt could give patients access to something doctors usually can’t: fun.
“In my clinic, I focus on daily tasks, like how to help someone meet their educational goals or their work goals — things that are very practical like helping them read,” he explained. “And I think it’s awesome to find ways to improve accessibility to just having fun.”
And OneCourt can be used for all kinds of sports, not just basketball, since the rubberized mat is removable and can be swapped out for a different game field.
This year, the Portland Trail Blazers became the first NBA team to make it available for games. Fans who are blind or have low vision can check out a device free of charge at any home game, said Matthew Gardner, senior director of customer insights with the Trail Blazers.
“We have five devices available for the rest of the season,” said Gardner. “Three of them we have on a reservable basis, so you can reach out to our guest experience team to set one aside, and then we keep two on a first-come, first-served’ basis.”
Consumers can’t buy a OneCourt device for personal use yet, but founder Jerred Mace said that is the ultimate goal.
“Fans have been telling us from the beginning that this isn’t just something that is useful in a stadium, [saying] ‘I’m watching sports at home all the time, and I want to listen alongside my friends and family,’ or ‘I want to watch at the bar,’” said Mace. “So we’re doing our best to stay focused and achieve initial scale within the the stadium markets, but we will get to that at-home model.”
Mace said as they expand, one element they are focused on is the device’s price.
“We are well aware that accessibility concerns cost as well, so we are doing our best to keep the cost around the range of a cellphone or a gaming console.”
Hank Vogel was able to try out the OneCourt device during a Blazers game against the Charlotte Hornets in February. After a Blazers shot from the three-point line early in the first quarter, the crowd exploded with a roar and over the cheers, Hank explained the experience, “It said in my headphones, ‘Score, Blazers three points,’ and it was really cool ’cause I could feel it.”
Vogel said it was a much different experience than the Blazer games he’s been to before.
“It was just boring. I would just sit there, and then I also felt like I was missing out on a lot because everybody [would be] standing up and cheering, and I’d be like, ‘I really wish I knew what was going on.'”
Now with this new technology, he does.