Trail Blazers pilot OneCourt's device for fans with blindness or low vision

During their final home stand of the regular season, the Portland Trail Blazers held a pilot test with accessibility tech company OneCourt. OneCourt created a device for sports fans with blindness or low vision, allowing them to experience live gameplay through tracking data with haptics and tactile court/field outlines.

The Blazers tested the devices with OneCourt in a suite for their April 9 game against the Pelicans, and then in the stands for matchups against the Warriors (April 11) and Rockets (April 12). Matt Gardner, Portland’s senior director of customer insights, said that students from the Washington State School for the Blind and the Northwest Association for Blind Athletes took part in a participant pool ranging in age from youth to adults.

“The pilot was definitely a success, which is something we’re excited about,” Gardner told SBJ. “... I think we’d love to continue to explore the feasibility of adding OneCourt as an options for fans in our arena.”

The organization has taken steps to make home games more accommodating to different fans, Gardner mentioned, like a sensory room and sensory kits for those on the autism spectrum or creating a space for nursing mothers to use with their children.


Gardner said OneCourt reached out last year about a potential collaboration. The Blazers were able to help OneCourt navigate access to the NBA tracking cameras, which are primarily for player data and analytics, to find a path toward usage with the OneCourt device. The NBA used Hawk-Eye for tracking data for the first time this season.

OneCourt took the device to Kansas City’s Arrowhead Stadium at the end of last year for a proof-of-concept test at a Chiefs game, experiencing a latency of approximately 3 seconds between live play and the device. OneCourt COO Antyush Bollini said that latency in Portland’s Moda Center was 0.5 seconds.

This was the first testing with fans in venue for the company, which was founded in late 2021 by four University of Washington alums. Doing multiple games in the same space, Bollini said it allowed the company to connect with a bigger sample size of fans and also develop the gameday experience.

“We saw a very short learning curve,” Bollini said. "Fans could independently use OneCourt in just minutes. Every fan who attended was a first-time user and understood what was happening in the game after just a few minutes of onboarding.”