As Paris shines under the global spotlight of the Olympic Games, technological innovations are enabling people with visual impairments to take it in
As Paris shines under the global spotlight of the Olympic Games, technological innovations are enabling people with visual impairments to take it in.
Each Olympic venue is a mosaic of singular stories, from the athletes to the spectators. Even before the Paralympic Games begin later this month, Paris 2024 organizers strove to make the Olympics more accessible.
“For these Games, we wanted to carefully listen to the ecosystem of people with disabilities,” said Ludivine Munos, a former Paralympic swimming medalist responsible for integrating accessibility as part of the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games Organizing Committee.
“Our goal is precisely to provide an experience with as few barriers as possible. People with disabilities have specific needs and sometimes find it difficult to understand what is happening on the field’,’ she said.
A standout innovation is the Vision Pad, a tactile tablet designed to add another layer of interaction for those with visual impairments. It features a moving magnetic ball, representing the ball in play on a court or a field. Users run their fingers across the tablet to keep track of the movement of the ball.
With a whole basketball court at her fingertips, Olympic enthusiast Zoé Thierry described her first experience with the pad, at the Bercy Arena for the Greece-Germany quarterfinal on Tuesday: “This time, we are truly immersed in the action, we can really follow the ball.”
“In addition to the great atmosphere, of course, because I could always feel that.
