Vodafone is trialing 5G-powered headsets, which give visually impaired fans the ability to watch live tennis, at the grand slam tennis tournament currently being held at the All England Club in Wimbledon, London. Using live video streamed from local TV cameras over 5G, the headsets – developed by GiveVision – enhance the images to suit the person’s specific sight needs, according to Vodafone.
The headsets are being trialed by visually impaired tennis fans and players Rosie Pybus, Ivan Rodriguez Deb, and Sinead Grealy, who described the experience as “amazing” and “life changing.” The headsets bring images close to users’ eyes to stimulate the photoreceptor cells in their retinas, which respond to light. As a result, a degree of sight can be regained. Continue Reading
Vodafone 5G covers an entire court or stadium so visually impaired fans can enjoy the action from anywhere in the crowd alongside their friends and family. As well as accessing the live feeds, people testing the headsets can switch between modes and use the camera phone in the headset to focus on whatever action they like.
“Providing opportunities like this really helps to open tennis up and make the whole experience more inclusive,” Rodiguez Deb said. “The technology is brilliant – the clarity, the option to change modes, the ability to see whatever I want – it gives me such a sense of freedom.”
Vodafone hopes the trial will showcase how the 5G technology can help make sport more accessible to more people.
By J. Sharpe Smith, Inside Towers Technology Editor
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