Design of an Accessible and Portable System for Soccer Players with Visual Impairments Alireza Zare, Dr. Kyla McMullen, and Dr. Christina Gardner-McCune

Clemson University, Clemson, SC

Background

Related Work

Design

References

Acknowledgments

• Pepsi created a tracking technology to enable players to

play a soccer match in 2011 [3]

• The system identified and tracked the locations of all the

objects on the field

• Each player wore an iPhone on their head to receive data

from tracking system and convert it to 3D sound

• The tracking system contained 16 cameras to cover the

field's pitch

• Headphones allowed each player to perceive the objects

around them

[1] Rakerd, Brad, William M. Hartmann, and Timothy L. McCaskey. "Identification

and localization of sound sources in the median sagittal plane." The Journal of

the Acoustical Society of America 106.5 (1999): 2812-2820..

[2] Association, B. P. Football 5-a-side.

[3] Pepsi. Pepsi’s sound of football, 2011.

[4] Baldis, Jessica J. "Effects of spatial audio on memory, comprehension, and

preference during desktop conferences." Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference

on Human factors in computing systems. ACM, 2001.

[5] Zare, Alireza, Kyla McMullen, and Christina Gardner-McCune. "Design of an

accessible and portable system for soccer players with visual

impairments."CHI'14 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing

Systems. ACM, 2014.

This research is supported by Clemson University. We would like to

thank the Creative Inquiry program for allowing the resources to

perform this work.

• Adding spatial audio will increase the efficiency of the whole memory system, focal

assurances, and perceived comprehension[4]

• A listener’s ability to focus on one of two competing messages or to filter unwanted

noise is dramatically enhanced by Spatial Audio

• Spatial Audio increases intelligibility, providing additional memory cue aiding in recall,

and allowing for more efficient use of working memory

• Paralympic football consists of adaptations of Association

Football Played with modified FIFA rules [2]

• Smaller field of play, Five players per team, Fully-

sighted goalkeeper

• Special ball with a noise-making device

• The players talk to one another and pass the ball by

calling each other

Why Spatial Audio ?

Proposed use of sound

• Spatial sounds will be used representing the objects’ angle and

range on the field in real-time

• Listeners can distinguish between complex noises that include

spectral structure at both high and low broadband energy

• Listener fail to identify noises with moved location when the

spectral content is at high frequency[1]

• Getting close to each object will make the sound assigned to the

object louder and inverse/attenuation factors will be used