Shelby Bean could not help but feel a bit jealous. As a deaf football player for four years at Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C., he called defensive plays with American Sign Language and dealt with other obstacles hearing opponents never need to worry about. Now an assistant coach, he was on the sideline earlier this season for a milestone at a school accustomed to them: The debut of new technology that allows plays to be displayed visually inside quarterback Brandon Washington’s helmet — a welcomed step that happened to coincide with the team’s first win of the season.
Gallaudet has been trying to level the playing field for the Deaf and hard of hearing community for more than a century, reports USA Today (Oct. 31, 2023). The helmet, developed with AT&T 129 years after quarterback Paul Hubbard invented the football huddle, is just the latest example of how the private university has been an incubator for Deaf technology in use around the world. The technology involved in the helmet could help firefighters, construction workers and first responders in noisy situations while giving the deaf and hard of hearing improved access to jobs and everyday activities.
The helmet tech works with the push of a button on a tablet on the sideline. The play is beamed over 5G to a tiny, nearly transparent screen in the quarterback’s helmet. Experts, advocates and those who worked to create the helmet dream of the day the technology is widespread and mainstream, unlike more elaborate visual headsets like Google Glass and Microsoft HoloLens.
Closed captioning is perhaps the most well-known example of a Deaf-led innovation that has found its way into everyday life. Videophones — like the ones that debuted at Gallaudet in 2004 — gave way to FaceTime and similar apps. The hope is the helmet technology is the next one to go big. “It can have so many more benefits outside of the Deaf and hard-of-hearing community that really just makes everyone’s life better,” said Shelby Bean. “There’s no cap to it. This can go anywhere and everywhere.”
Here is a 2-minute video clip on the story.
Classroom discussion questions:
- Why is developing new products, the topic of Chapter 5 in your Heizer/Render/Munson text, so difficult?
- What are some other applications you can think of for this technology?