Situation

The world’s approx. 285 million people living with blindness or low vision are underserved by sports broadcasters. Televised coverage relies heavily on visual storytelling, while radio commentary is two slow to keep up with on screen action.

Brief

To enable people with low vision to experience the entertainment value of sport on a new and immersive level. To use existing technologies to provide a real-time, unobtrusive audio experience for blind and low vision tennis fans that keeps them up to date with the on court action.

Objectives

To create a new standard for broadcast sports accessibility, and an experience that blind and low vision sports fans can enjoy socially with friends and family.

A new way for people who are blind or have low vision to follow the sports they love.

Action Audio is an accessibility feature for blind and low vision sports fans. It uses real-time ball monitoring technology and spatial sound design to give audiences insight into what’s happening, when it’s happening, without the need for visual information.

As it’s applied to tennis, Action Audio emphasises ball speed and trajectory, proximity to line and shot type (forehand or backhand), allowing low vision audiences to ‘see’ the state of the game through sound, and follow critical moments in real-time.

Action Audio launched at the 2021 Australian Open tennis finals through digital radio, and was simulcast on Vision Australian Radio.

Using existing technology was an important part of the creation of Action Audio, part of this was utilising Hawkeye ball-tracking.

Hawkeye data played a bigger role than normal in 2021 due to the use of real time electronic line-calling. This increased focus on real time usage worked in favour of Action Audio, and we were able to seize on this opportunity to process data in a time frame not normally possible.

Hawkeye data is a raw stream of location information of both the ball and players. The technical development of Action Audio involved creating a fast and intuitive data processing algorithm to translate this stream of raw positional data to information-rich audio, specifically targeted at fans with blindness or low vision. This was done using scalable compute clusters on Amazon AWS, and custom Python code running on running on our production machines in the central broadcast compound at the event.

Action Audio was developed over a two year period through a co-design process with blind and low vision sports fans, and through iterative prototyping using different technologies and sound design principles.

The final implementation of Action Audio uses live data from the Australian Open’s Hawkeye ball monitoring system, translated into sound using four fundamental sound design principles:

Social Consideration – Sport is a social pastime. Action Audio is designed for co-watching experiences by both low vision and sighted audiences.

Existing Sound Languages – Where appropriate, we have adopted existing ‘sound languages’ used by low vision communities.

Accentuated Tension Points – Sport is about pushing the limits. Our design emphasises dramatic moments within play, and signals coming breakthroughs.

Selective Auditory Attention – Action Audio should not override other necessary audio information or unnecessarily distract.

Action Audio launched to a total global audience reach of over 275,000, and widespread media coverage including Fast Company, Channel Nine News and Adweek.

Many blind tennis fans reported that it was the first time they could follow an Australian Open final without assistance.

Engagement

~ 10-12k listeners on Vision Australia radio*

~ 1800 listeners via the AO website

~ 3k unique visitors** to the website - Action Audio

~ 1000* video impressions (roughly evenly split between the audio description version, and the other version)

~ 270k viewers on Channel 9 News coverage (source)

* Estimated by Conrad Brown, station manager Vision Australia

** Figures from the week following the tournament