How GiveVision brought Wimbledon to people with low vision
Adam Tweed | 19 Jul 2023It's a little odd when a camera pans across an audience at a live sporting event and you see people sitting wearing VR headsets. 'Just how rich do you have to be to pay for Centre Court tickets and then just sit there playing VR games?' you might wonder!
Well, for all you tennis fans, rest assured they aren't playing games. What you're actually witnessing is a potentially transformative piece of tech, an innovation that makes live events such as theatre and sports as well as visiting exhibitions and galleries, more accessible to people with low vision.
How does SightPlus work?
The SightPlus from GiveVision is a smartphone-based AR (Augmented Reality) headset that uses the video from the camera on the smartphone mounted on the front of the headset and combines it with software to enhance the image in real time, based on the visual preferences of the user.
Their preference might be to zoom in, or to adjust the contrast or brightness of the image, all of which can be carried out in real time using a hand-held remote control without removing the headset.
Speaking in an article in the Guardian, Rosie Pybus from the RNIB (Royal National Institute of Blind People) who also plays visually impaired tennis, said, “It was the first time I have had that level of vision in life. ... It was just incredible. I’ve been to Wimbledon four or five times; I have never been able to watch the tennis. It has always been the case of come with a friend who can see."
It's an experience echoed by many users of the headset. Sinead Grealy, another tennis fan who took part in the Wimbledon trial, in an article in The Independent said of the SightPlus:
“The technology is incredible. It takes my eyesight to better than it was. The first time I put it on I just went, ‘woah’. And then I went ‘woah’ again with the first adjustment because it’s so simple. I’m a technophobe and it’s so easy to use."
Real-time live action speed
The Wimbledon setup was carried out in partnership with Vodafone and made use of Vodafone's high-speed 5G network.
The headsets could also stream the the live broadcasts, adjusted to their visual preferences, with the speed of the 5G connection meaning they could watch without the lag of a normal broadcast stream and therefore could witness a point being scored (or missed) fast enough to be a part of the crowd reaction and therefore the live experience, rather than hearing a reaction and finding out the reason for it several seconds later.
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GiveVision's Head of Operations Joanna Liddington, also speaking in the Independent, highlighted the impact that the SightPlus can have on these sorts of interactions with live events, the parts of the spectacle of sport that so many of us take for granted:
“One of the guys we work with, who was born visually impaired, he said the best thing [about using the headset] is, when there’s a foul, he can choose if it was a foul. ‘I can argue with my friends about it, I can be angry with the ref, my opinion and my voice finally matters.’”
Finessing tech over time
The SightPlus technology has actually been around for a while, and was a finalist at AbilityNet's 2018 Tech4Good awards. AbilityNet's Head of Digital Inclusion, Robin Chrisopherson said, "GiveVision takes the best of image enhancement technology and uses it to address the challenges faced by the many millions of people with a vision impairment worldwide.”
The headset was also featured in a fantastic story by BBC Click back in 2019.
Maisy McAdam, then 22 years-old tried out the SightPlus for the first time live on stage. With the headset on, she relayed the emotional moment back to an equally emotional audience at the Hays Festival; an audience she was seeing in detail for the first time. She then went on to read from her favourite book; something she had not been able to do since a brain tumour had resulted in her vision loss at age 16.
Further Resources
- Useful resources for people with sight loss and vision impairment
- Webinar playback: Technology to help people with sight loss - with RNIB and Envision
- Keep up to date with accessibility issues with the AbilityNet newsletter
- Find out more about AbilityNet's free live webinar events
AbilityNet provides a range of free services to help disabled people and older people. If you can afford it, please donate to help us support older and disabled people through technology.
