By: Arezo Ahmadi
Thanks to the media and Taylor Swift, I became an American football fan over the past few weeks and surprised myself. Me? A football fan? Never thought I’d see the day. But suddenly, I realized the surprises didn’t end there when I read about AT&T’s latest invention for Deaf and hard-of-hearing football players at Gallaudet University: 5G-connected communication helmets!
Gallaudet University, an institution for Deaf and hard-of-hearing students in Washington, D.C., and AT&T recently collaborated in early October to produce 5G-connected football helmets that enable coaches to send plays to quarterbacks through their helmet visors. These visors work through a wireless connection between coaches’ tablets and the lens of the football helmets. Coaches can choose a play on their tablet, which then gets sent to the players’ helmet lens and is displayed through augmented reality that helps the players visualize the play. Gallaudet’s quarterbacks talked about how useful it was for them to be able to communicate with their coach, and I can’t help but wonder about my own Deaf father, who was a water polo athlete in the Deaflympics. As a fellow water polo player myself, I use my voice a lot to talk to my teammates during games, especially when I’m open and close to the goal. For him, he has to rely a lot more on his hands to capture his teammates’ attention by waving. I get tired just by swimming back and forth during a game, so I can only imagine how much more stamina it takes to be more vigilant and score the winning goal!
It’s interesting to note that one of the most famous strategy features of modern American football, the “huddle,” where players gather around to discuss strategies away from the opposing team, was actually created by Gallaudet in 1894 to hide hand signs from their Deaf opponents. In fact, huddling is now not exclusive to just sports, but in other team contexts to hide information from the opposing entity. What was once a technique to address the needs of Deaf football players has now expanded to become a universal part of sports strategy and even just teamwork in general.
While these helmets are a great way to increase communication access in football games, I wonder about how much more we can do with this foundation. There are AR goggles for swimmers to use to help them improve their sport by providing real-time metrics on screen; how soon could we bring this technology to the professional field for Deaf swimmers to use? The possibilities are endless, but what was key for AT&T was that they partnered with Gallaudet University. Any time that inventions are made specifically for the Deaf community or any other community with disabilities, it is so important to work with people who identify with the disability themselves and involve them in the process. What’s so beautiful is hearing Corey Anthony, AT&T senior VP of networking engineering and operations, say: “We came up with ideas on how to make this helmet more effective [and] we’d interact with [players and coaches]. They would give us feedback. We’d go back, make changes, work on it. It’s just a beautiful relationship that we have with that university.”
I hope that we can bring technology like this to the fields of the NFL, changing the way football is played. As Shelby Bean, Gallaudet’s Special Teams Coordinator, says, “Unlimited possibilities for leveling the playing field."
Originally Posted: 22 November 2023
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