Sports fans usually watch their favorite game by watching it on TV or from the venue itself, but those who are blind and have low vision generally have to rely on the announcer or a radio broadcast. OneCourt aims to heighten their experience with a miniature pitch that allows one to sense the position of the players and the ball in near real time.
The company showed off its technology at CES 2024 in Las Vegas. The group, made up of recent graduates from the University of Washington (and here it must be said, Go Huskies), was concerned about the lack of access to the latest information for people with low vision.
There’s nothing wrong with the radio broadcast, but it’s often delayed by 10 to 30 seconds, and neither it nor the live announcers provide the spatial detail that viewing fans experience.
Fortunately, many major league sports broadcast the exact, real-time locations of players and the ball along with video and audio. The OneCourt team takes that information and relays it to a touch screen with a touchable cover that mimics the lines of the court or court.
I tried out the battery-powered device for a bit in a demo game the team was playing at their booth at CES. You place your hands flat on the laptop-sized “field,” and the movements of the play’s main characters (quarterback, receiver, ball) are transmitted via vibrations that shift with considerable fidelity. I could tell, for example, that a player had caught a pass and was running down the left side, but I couldn’t tell you how close he was to the paint. Different intensities and patterns correspond to things like snaps, tackles and so on.
The technology can easily be adapted to other sports, as most use mandatory similar rectangular spaces and often transmit player data. OneCourt CTO Andrew Buckingham told me they hope to offer sponsorship devices for free right in the venues, the way you might request closed caption screens or audio descriptions in the movie theater. That way, when the crowd goes wild, a person who can’t see the play doesn’t have to wait for the recap to understand the epic rush that prompted it.
Buckingham said he has already had interest from some in the business and they are working to raise the first round in the coming months to take the business and hardware to the next level.
