Field of Vision is an innovative sports technology company, founded by Tim Farrelly, David Deneher and Omar Salem. The team is guided by sports industry veteran Tom Sears. In 2022, Field of Vision was among Time Magazine’s Best Inventions and their partners include Manchester City Football Club and the Australian Football League. After Field of Vision was announced as the Best Initiative to Promote Inclusivity in Sport & Physical Activity, Deneher spoke to the Federation of Irish Sport.
“Field of vision was started during the Covid lockdown when my co-founder Omar saw a viral video of a fan bringing his blind friend to a football game and tracing the position of the ball on his hand.
“And we thought we could do this with technology, so we started Field of Vision. We use AI to track all the key information from the sports game in real time and then we track that back to our device, which moves around based on where the ball is on the pitch and when the shots, tackles and passes, occur.”
At the core of Field of Vision’s mission is the belief that there does not need to be separation between vision impaired sports fans and the magic and power of sport.
Deneher spoke about where the company is on its journey and what it’s like to win this award.
“It’s really great to win this award because we’re three college students who never had any prior experience of working with visually impaired people. So the number one thing that we’re concerned about in our company is inclusivity. If Field of Vision isn’t actually of benefit to visually impaired fans then what would be the point. So winning this award is just fantastic acknowledgment of the work that we are putting in and showing us that we are on the right track”.
Deneher and his team at Field of Vision are incredibly optimistic about the future.
“What we want is that in the future, if a visually impaired fan wants to watch a live sports game in their living room, they can sit down and open our app, and the same as we do with Sky Sports, pick whatever game is on and they’re FOV device will move. We want to expand to achieve this, we want to expand to different sports, more stadiums. Over the course of the next 12 months we want to expand to three stadiums.”