At the MWC in Barcelona, the French start-up Touch2SSee presents a prototype tablet for the visually impaired. Thanks to several localized elements, capable of vibrating and emitting haptic feedback, it makes it possible to “touch” a match.
Technological innovations in accessibility are among the most exciting. Rarely put forward, they nevertheless contribute to the transformation of millions of lives, by making possible things that have never been possible before. Audio description, live subtitles, image recognition, adaptive gamepads… All these solutions help to improve the lives of many people, even if they will never interest as much as the latest iPhone.
At the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, on the Orange stand, the French startup Touch2See came to exhibit two prototype tablets intended for people with visual impairments. Its objective is ambitious: to transmit the atmosphere of a match to people who cannot see it.
Football, before expanding to other sports
Two different versions of the Touch2See prototype exist:
- One allows you to feel the movements on the ground by touching the tablet (pins come out, vibrate and send more or less substantial haptic feedback).
- The other tracks the ball with a small moving magnet.
Eventually, these two devices should be able to merge. These are currently 3D printed prototypes far from ready for marketing.
How did this idea come about? Arthur Chazelle, the founder of Touch2See, tells Numerama that only 5 stadiums offer audio description in France. What inspired him was the video of a man in a stadium in Bogota who, to help his visually impaired friend, mimicked the movements of the players with his hands. The Touch2See tablet, in addition to making it possible to live a match at home, could one day be distributed to people with disabilities in stadiums to allow them to feel the action, while listening to the atmosphere. A pilot program, at the Vélodrome in Marseille, has already enabled around twenty testers to experience it.
Eventually, Touch2See hopes to extend its technology to many sports, even if it will need “ultra-direct” data from the federations for that (in the context of football, players in the field have agreed to give it free access, in the name of the nature of the project). Will sports ever be “touchable” like a Braille book? It’s hard not to be seduced by the initiative.
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