Editor’s note: Here, Dr. Kirk Adams, blind since age five, a lifelong sports fan, and now an advisor to OneCourt, shares the first time he felt a live game unfold beneath his hands, and a milestone that is about to bring that experience home for blind and low-vision fans everywhere.
The Pitch I Finally Felt
I have listened to thousands of baseball games. I know the rhythm of a broadcast the way I know my own heartbeat: the announcer’s rising voice, the crowd’s intake of breath, the pause before the pitch. But until a spring afternoon in 2024, I had never felt a game happen at the very instant it happened.
I was at the University of Washington, seated with the OneCourt team and a few friends from our community, my hands resting flat on a tablet about the size of an iPad. Beneath my fingers was a baseball diamond. The Seattle Mariners were playing the Tampa Bay Rays, and when the first pitch was thrown, I felt it cross the plate, low and away. The next one came in high and tight. Then the crack of contact, and I traced the ball as it carried into the outfield and settled into a glove. Later, with runners aboard, I felt them holding at the bases. I was not waiting to be told. I was there, in real time, with the play.
I have rarely felt anything quite like it.
A Lifetime Around the Game
Sports are in my blood. My father played basketball at Western Washington University, where he held the single-game rebounding record for years, and he went on to coach high school ball. I grew up in gyms. As an adult, I held season tickets to the Seattle SuperSonics. To this day I sit on my front porch, close enough to see Lumen Field, and listen to the Mariners on the radio.
And yet, like so many blind and low-vision fans, I have always experienced the game one step removed. A friend leaning over to explain a play. A broadcast that, for all its poetry, arrives a beat behind the action. You can love a sport your whole life and still never quite feel inside it, never share the roar at the very moment it erupts.
That is exactly what is beginning to change.
What a Tactile Broadcast Actually Does
OneCourt has built what it calls a tactile broadcast, and I believe it is one of the most exciting things to happen for blind sports fans in my lifetime. It is a patent-pending haptic tablet that takes official, real-time data from the NFL, NBA, and MLB and turns it into something you can feel: every pitch, every dunk, every touchdown, the instant it happens.
Here is how it works in your hands. You rest your palms flat to feel where the ball is and how the play is flowing across the court or field. You bring your fingertips in to zoom into the detail. The hoop pulses when points are scored. Raised overlays give each sport its own shape. And all of it is paired with synchronized audio, so you are feeling and listening at once, the way sighted fans watch and listen at once. It does not replace the broadcast in your ear; it completes it. What used to take a full sentence to explain, your hands understand in a heartbeat.
From the Arena to the Living Room
This is not a prototype. OneCourt has already proven itself on the biggest stages in sport, at Super Bowl LX, the NBA All-Star Game, and the MLB All-Star Game, in partnership with Ticketmaster, and more than ten professional teams now offer it free to fans at every home game.
And here is the news I have been so eager to share: OneCourt is bringing the tactile broadcast home. The at-home experience pairs the haptic tablet with a smartphone app and an All-Access subscription that unlocks every football, basketball, and baseball game, every team, with no blackout dates, and more sports are on the way. Whether you’re on your couch, gathered with family, or out at a sports bar, you can feel the game for yourself.
As OneCourt founder and CEO Jerred Mace puts it, fans have been asking for exactly this:
“Since launching in venues, fans have been asking when they can get OneCourt at home! It’s no surprise to us that they’re snapping up our first production batch.”
I understand the feeling completely. For a long time now, I have wanted nothing more than a OneCourt in my lap on that front porch.
Why I Joined OneCourt
I should tell you plainly: I am an advisor to OneCourt. I met Jerred Mace in May of 2024 at a Disability Connect event at Microsoft, and we connected immediately over a shared love of sport and a shared conviction that it can, and should, be made accessible to everyone. I joined the company as an advisor in 2025 to help shape the product and its journey from the arena into the home. I am not a bystander to this story. I am proud to be part of building it.
Sports Are for Everyone, and the Numbers Say So
I have spent my career making one argument in a hundred different rooms: inclusion is not just the right thing to do, it is a strategic advantage. OneCourt is that argument made real. This is not charity. It is great design meeting an enormous, growing audience.
Consider the scale. The number of Americans who are blind or have low vision is projected to roughly double over the next 25 years, to about 16 million people.
- For fans, OneCourt offers something we have rarely had: independence, real-time emotion, and the simple joy of sharing the game with the people we love.
- For teams, leagues, and sponsors, it offers a vast, loyal, and long-underserved audience, and accessibility that fans do not just hear about but actually experience.
When you make the game something everyone can feel, everyone wins that game.
A Special Welcome for the ACB Community
There is one more reason to celebrate. OneCourt has partnered with the American Council of the Blind to bring this experience to members first. ACB members can use the promo code ACB26 at checkout for one free month of the All-Access subscription, while supplies last. It is fitting. This technology was built with the blind and low-vision community, through years of hands-on co-design, not simply for us. Now the community is being invited in first.
Get in the Game
So here’s my invitation. If you, or someone you love, have ever sat with a game on the radio and wished you could feel it for yourself, this is your moment. Visit https://www.onecourt.io/preorder to learn more and join the list. ACB members, don’t forget the code: ACB26.
Picture this season’s playoffs, every full count, every fast break, every goal-line stand, not described to you a beat late, but unfolding beneath your hands in real time, in your own home. The game was always meant for everyone. And now, at last, everyone can feel it.
” Inclusion isn’t just the right thing to do — it’s a strategic advantage. “
Dr. Kirk Adams, Ph.D.
Advocate, Leader and Keynote Speaker on Disability Inclusion & Leadership
Leading the Way to Accessible Innovation
Institute for Sustainable Diversity and Inclusion (ISDI)
Executive Director
Strengthening individual and organizational capability for creating diverse, inclusive and equitable workplaces.
Innovative Impact, LLC Consulting
Managing Director
Impactful Workforce Inclusion Starts Here
American Foundation for the Blind
Immediate Past President & CEO
To create a world of no limits for people who are blind or visually impaired.
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