Attending sports events with a vision impairment.
Sports events are an essential part of our society, fostering a sense of community, passion, and celebration. Whilst attending sports events is an enjoyable experience for many, it can present significant challenges for individuals with sight loss. In this blog, we will explore some of the barriers faced by vision impaired people in attending sports events, as well as some potential solutions.
Accessibility infrastructure
Many stadiums and arenas do not have key access infrastructure, such as appropriate signage, tactile indicators to signify the beginning and end of flights of stairs and navigation infrastructure, such as that provided by Waymap, which could allow vision impaired fans to navigate independently. The absence of accessible seating arrangements, as well as designated areas for guide dogs pose additional challenges. Many of these issues can be resolved by working with organisations such as Motionspot to incorporate universal design principles so that those with a vision impairment are put in a position to attend sports events independently. But where this isn’t possible, for example in an older stadium, simple adjustments, such as the provision of accessible seating with unobstructed views, can make a huge difference.
Digital infrastructure
With the world becoming more digital, most people’s initial contact point with a sports venue is likely to be online. In addition, purchasing tickets is increasingly becoming a task that one completes via the internet. Unfortunately, inaccessible web/ticketing sites are all too common and this has the effect of putting vision impaired people off of attending sports events. In order to address this, sports venues should prioritise ensuring that their digital infrastructure complies with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines and that it is regularly tested by vision impaired users, as well as those with other disabilities.
Training
As in many sectors, the provisions that sports venues make can make a number of assumptions concerning the needs that a vision impaired person may or may not have. For example, a common assumption is that vision impaired people will always attend with a companion. This is not always either out of choice or necessity. If sports venues prioritise comprehensive vision impairment awareness training, they will be in a genuine position to ensure that those with sight loss can attend events with the knowledge that their needs will be accommodated as holistically as possible.