PARIS– As Paris shines in the global spotlight of Olympic Games, Technological innovations are allowing visually impaired people to absorb it.
Each Olympic venue is a mosaic of unique stories, from athletes to spectators. Even before the Paralympic Games start later this month, Paris 2024 organizers have strived to make the Olympics more accessible.
“For these Games, we wanted to listen closely to the ecosystem of people with disabilities,” said Ludivine Munos, former Paralympic swimming medalist responsible for integrating accessibility as part of the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games Organizing Committee.
“Our objective is precisely to provide an experience with as few barriers as possible. People with disabilities have specific needs and sometimes have difficulty understanding what is happening on the ground,” she said.
ONE outstanding innovation is the Vision Pad, a tactile tablet designed to add another layer of interaction for people with visual impairments. It has a moving magnetic ball, representing the ball in play on a court or field. Users run their fingers across the tablet to track the movement of the ball.
With an entire basketball court at her fingertips, Olympic enthusiast Zoé Thierry described her first experience with the pad, at the Bercy Arena for the Quarter-finals Greece vs Germany on Tuesday: “This time we are really immersed in the action, we can really follow the ball.”
“Besides the great weather, of course, because I could always feel that. But it’s a great addition to the game,” she adds.
A total of 45 tablets are available and for now they can only cover ball games. It is being used for basketball, football and rugby at the Olympics and four sports at the Paralympics. “It would be nice if we had this for individual sports too,” said Thierry.
Other new technologies also address visual impairments. An app helps visually impaired people find their seats on trains. Another is the Low Vision Helmet, which allows users to zoom in on an athlete, race or action. Visually impaired individuals wear it on their eyes, like a VR headset. It is connected to the venues’ broadcast feed, allowing users to switch between live action and television coverage, explains Munos.
In the biggest stadium in France, the Stade de France – where the emotion is strongest but the athletes appear smaller – the Low Vision Helmet really stands out.
French visitor Florian Trichaud, who is visually impaired and considers sport his “drug”, wore the helmet in the athletics final at the Stade de France on Thursday. A big football fan, he usually likes to go to sporting events “just for the atmosphere and the fan culture”.
“With this headset, I was able to experience things visually, and it’s hard to notice, but being able to see the elements and feel included makes a huge difference for us,” he said.
Trichaud noted some limitations: “The resolution can still be improved and the headset can be quite tiring on the eyes.”
The products were designed by companies including GiveVision, Touch2See and Ezymob, who partnered with the Paris 2024 organizing committee to introduce the technologies to the Olympic realm.
Another vital technology for people with visual impairments is audio description.
“The aim is to describe everything that happens in the stadium in the smallest detail – movement, atmosphere, colors, action,” said Adrien Izard-Le Calvé, a French audio describer.
Sitting next to colleague Joana Wexsteen, the two are the eyes of the Stade de France. The audio description echoes around 15 sports at the Paris Olympics. While the technology was available for the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, this is the first time it has been used at Olympic sporting events, she said.
“Being able to help people with visual impairments is incredible. What we are experiencing is exceptional, and helping these individuals feel as included as anyone else is crucial,” said Wexsteen.
Anyone with visual impairments can connect to the audio description broadcast on the Paris2024 Olympics app and follow the game with a pair of headphones.
Organizers worked to make sure people knew the technology was available and to make it easy to access. They “emailed and communicated with all ticket holders, including people with disabilities, to inform them about everything that was available during the Games,” Munos said.
There is still work to be done to allow everyone to enjoy the bluebell spectacle, a 6.25 meter pole vaultaces, knockouts, sprints and butterfly strokes. But Paris organizers are trying to set a precedent for inclusivity and accessibility at major sporting events.
“I think it is essential, for the sake of the legacy, that it continues in future games. One of the biggest disappointments would be if we progressed in these games and regressed later,” says Wexsteen.
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For more Paris Olympics coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/2024-paris-olympic-games.
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