The excitement of a game highly depends on the commentary that describes the in-game events. However, for individuals with sensory disabilities, especially visual or hearing impairments, enjoying sports events can be challenging. Our solution was developed as part of the 4th Edition of MonstarHacks which is an internal hackathon hosted by Monstarlab where one of the goals was to engage fans in sports. We developed a solution to make sports enjoyable for all without any limits, especially for sensory-disabled individuals. By bridging this sensory gap, our solution — SportsBuddy is proposing a new way on how to experience sports, making it both accessible and enjoyable at the same time for everyone, regardless of their abilities.
Problem Statement
Sports fans with visual and hearing impairments face challenges in enjoying game events in detail. Visually impaired fans face difficulties in understanding in-game play, and on the other hand, hearing-impaired fans don’t get thrilled by the live commentary. These difficulties not only take out the excitement but also makes them feel that they are not part of the game.
The Solution
SportsBuddy is a revolutionary platform that opens a new door for sports enjoyment for individuals with sensory disabilities, especially with visual or hearing impairments. SportsBuddy offers detailed commentary for blind individuals and sign language features for deaf individuals, ensuring an immersive sports experience for all.
 is an object storage service that offers industry-leading scalability, data availability, security, and performance. We’ve used Amazon S3 for storing user data.
DynamoDB: Amazon DynamoDB is a fully managed NoSQL database service that provides fast and predictable performance with seamless scalability. We’ve used DynamoDB for storing the session memory, statistics feed, sign language avatar, etc.
AWS Lambda: AWS Lambda is a compute service that runs your code in response to events and automatically manages the compute resources, making it the fastest way to turn an idea into a modern, production, serverless application. We’ve used this cost-efficient service mostly for the backend processing.
Amazon Rekognition: Amazon Rekognition is a cloud-based image and video analysis service that makes it easy to add advanced computer vision capabilities to any application. The service is powered by proven deep-learning technology. We’ve used Amazon Rekognition and other services like Kafka for real-time data processing.
Amazon Polly: Amazon Polly is a cloud service that converts text into lifelike speech. It supports multiple languages and includes a variety of lifelike voices. We’ve used Amazon Polly for generating voice commentary.
Amazon Transcribe: Amazon Transcribe is an automatic speech recognition service that uses machine learning models to convert audio to text. You can use Amazon Transcribe as a standalone transcription service or add speech-to-text capabilities to any application. We’ve used Amazon Transcribe for extracting text from live commentary.
Amazon Bedrock: Amazon Bedrock is a fully managed service that makes high-performing foundation models (FMs) from leading AI startups and Amazon available for your use through a unified API. You can choose from a wide range of foundation models to find the model that is best suited for your use case. We’ve leveraged the power of Amazon Bedrock to facilitate our solution better.
Amazon SageMaker: Amazon SageMaker is a fully managed machine learning (ML) service. With SageMaker, data scientists and developers can quickly and confidently build, train, and deploy ML models into a production-ready hosted environment. We’ve leveraged the power of Amazon SageMaker to facilitate our solution better.
Impact & benefits
Impact
SportsBuddy has a great impact on the sports community and the society. By addressing the needs of the blind and deaf community, SportsBuddy promotes inclusivity and equality in the sports community. With the help of SportsBuddy, we can help blind and deaf individuals enjoy all types of sports to the fullest. It will uplift their moral spirits and also will provide them with a sense of belonging. They won’t feel left out anymore in the sports community. Our solution will help raise social awareness regarding the problems that blind or deaf individuals face in their day-to-day lives. It will inspire other communities as well to focus on the needs of people with disabilities.
Benefits
Our solution is designed to benefit a wide range of stakeholders connected to sports, including fans, athletes, and sports organizations.
Fans
Our solution boosts the experience for fans to enjoy sports, particularly those with visual and hearing impairments. By providing accessible features such as real-time captioning, audio descriptions, sign language interpretation, etc, we ensure that all fans can enjoy sporting events to the fullest. This inclusivity helps grow a sense of belonging and engagement among fans, regardless of their abilities, enriching their overall experience and satisfaction.
Athletes
For athletes, our solution provides accessibility by ensuring the experience is the same and accessible to all fans, regardless of their sensory capabilities. By reaching a wider range of audience, athletes can amplify their impact and inspire individuals from diverse backgrounds. SportsBuddy provides athletes with chances for greater exposure and recognition, contributing to their personal and professional growth within the sports industry.
Sports Organizations
Sports organizations can also benefit from our solution through increased audience engagement, brand loyalty, and revenue generation. By prioritizing accessibility and inclusivity, organizations can showcase their commitment to social responsibility and diversity, growing their reputation and appealing to fans and sponsors alike. Moreover, our solution may open up new revenue streams through subscription services, pay-per-view options, and targeted advertising, driving financial sustainability and growth for sports organizations. Overall, our solution positively impacts users by promoting inclusivity, accessibility, and engagement within the sports community. By breaking down barriers and embracing diversity, we envision a future where sports experiences are amplified for all individuals, leading to positive changes in their overall enjoyment, participation, and operations within the sports industry.
Commercial Viability
In a world where technology is evolving every day, ensuring inclusivity for all individuals, including those with visual and hearing impairments, is crucial. With approximately 253 million[5] visually impaired people and over 430 million[6] people with disabling hearing loss all over the world, there exists a significant market demand for products that address their needs.
Golam Shakib Khan
Mobile Engineer - II
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