In 1892, a quarterback named Paul D. Hubbard invented a way to communicate privately with his teammates at Gallaudet University, a school for deaf and hard of hearing students. Worried that opposing teams could steal Gallaudet’s plays because they were communicating through American Sign Language (ASL), Hubbard proposed they gather together in a tight circle to strategize.
That formation became known as the huddle, and it is now a fixture of football at all levels, from high school to the NFL.
But since then, the sport has fallen behind in accessibility. Coaches primarily speak to players through in-helmet radios, which presents a gap for hearing impaired athletes.
However, an innovation from AT&T could change the game. The telecommunications company collaborated with Gallaudet University and creative agency Translation to develop a new football helmet that enables in-game, visual communication between coaches and players using 5G and augmented reality.
It works like this: Coaches on the sidelines can select a play from a tablet and send that play to players through a lens inside the helmet. The quarterback wearing the helmet then receives the play through AR on the digital display within the visor. The whole system is powered by 5G.
AT&T and Translation claim this product could revolutionize football again by making it more inclusive. Right now, the 5G helmet is only available as a prototype, but the aim is to make it a commonly used piece of equipment for athletes.
“My hope for the innovation is that it becomes more widely accessible,” Jason Campbell, chief creative officer of Translation, told Adweek.
Real experiences
Along with the helmet, Translation created a promotional film that cleverly uses sound design to depict the communication gap that deaf athletes face on the field. It is set at Gallaudet University and features the college’s real players.
The ad’s soundtrack is a rendition of Simon & Garfunkel’s 1964 classic “Sound of Silence,” re-recorded by Amira Unplugged, a partially deaf African-American Muslim singer. Campbell said the song’s opening lyrics inspired the concept for the film: “Hello darkness my old friend / I’ve come to talk with you again.”
The sound captures the intensity of the action and real moments from the game, such as how players use vibrations as signals and how the coach gets their attention from the sidelines.
“We wanted the viewer to feel they were with the player,” said Campbell. “We wanted it to be a hopeful piece, but also wanted to inspire and challenge at the same time.”
While AT&T wants to demonstrate 5G’s capabilities through this project, Campbell stressed that this is more than a typical ad campaign.
“If we really are in the business of ideas and creativity, we have way more power than just to make an ad,” he said. “We can actually try to solve things.”
Including the community
AT&T is among a wave of brands that have recently developed products for disabled people, from Estée Lauder’s voice-enabled makeup assistant for visually impaired users to an adaptive deodorant from Unilever’s Degree.
However, disability advocates have raised concerns that such products sometimes make no impact or exclude the very communities they were designed for. Degree’s adaptive deodorant, for example, won a Grand Prix at Cannes Lions but never hit shelves.
Campbell said that AT&T’s helmet was in the works for two years and included deaf and hard of hearing creators at every stage of the process.
His advice to other marketers attempting to make products for communities is “don’t do it in isolation.”
“Too often in advertising we get caught up in a great idea that will win the thing,” he continued. “That’s just a surface version of the power that this industry is capable of.”
AT&T and Translation are also in talks to open source the technology.
“It has more applications than what we just opened up,” said Campbell. “This is a thing that the sport needs, but it could also go somewhere else.”
