Courting a New Technology for Blind Basketball Fans: Meet Diane
Society’s Core program instructor Diane Starin spent most of her childhood in the Midwest but says she feels like a California native because of her love for this state – and her longtime love of the Sacramento Kings.
When she found herself accepting a donation for Society for the Blind on the Kings’ court at the Golden 1 Center last month, it was not only a full circle moment as a fan, but for her yearlong work building a relationship between Society and the Kings.
Diane’s journey to the Kings’ basketball court began in Nebraska at 18 months old when her mother noticed a strange dot in her eye in a photograph. By evening, they were on a plane to the Mayo Clinic to remove her eyes due to cancer of the optic nerve.
“Fortunately, I grew up in a family that did not overprotect or restrict me because of my blindness, so I still did everything my sisters did,” Diane said.
As a child, she attended a school for the blind that was 150 miles away from her home, so she lived on campus during the week and came home on weekends.
“It was a really good school, both academically and athletically, so when we moved to California my 10th grade year, I was able to graduate early and attend Sierra College,” she said.
Majoring in agriculture and horse husbandry, Diane leaned into her love of horses, starting quarter horse breeding businesses, giving riding lessons and becoming a certified therapeutic riding instructor.
She was living in Redding and working with horses when she began working for Society for the Blind part-time in our senior program 20 years ago. As her relationship was ending, she was hired full-time in Society’s Core program, so she moved to Sacramento. Not long after, her horse passed away.
No longer able to afford working with horses, Diane pursued her love of basketball, becoming a steadfast fan of the Sacramento Kings.
When Society for the Blind received an email about the new OneCourt assistive device for sports fans about a year ago, Diane immediately contacted the company for more information about what it calls the first tactile sports broadcast device. That’s when she learned the Sacramento Kings and Golden 1 Center had already been in touch with OneCourt.
“The Kings came on board with OneCourt pretty early and bought five devices for fans to use while watching the game,” Diane said. “OneCourt gave me a free pair of tickets to go try it out, and when I got my hands on it for the first time, I fell in love with it.”
Diane describes OneCourt as a rectangular device about 8”x10” with a silicon layover on top that shows an outline of the court using raised lines. Underneath the silicon, the device hooks up to the real-time broadcast in the arena.
“For people who are blind, the only thing missing when listening to a basketball game is you can’t tell when the ball is being passed from one player to another,” Diane said. “This device shows me where the ball is on the court via little round-headed pins that pop up and down and move with the ball in real time. When you lay your hands on top, you feel it instantly. It’s an amazing device.”
She has used the device at the arena for every game this season, and one day thought to herself, “I want our clients at Society for the Blind to experience this, too.”
Diane called the Golden 1 Center and spoke with their marketing team, which connected her with Ticketmaster to sponsor a watch party for Society for the Blind’s clients and staff.
In January, several Society for the Blind staff members and clients gathered in a Golden 1 Center lounge to watch an away game on the big screen television. The designer of the OneCourt device was there to show them how it worked.
“Ticketmaster was so thrilled with the event that two weeks later I received a call saying they wanted to present a donation to Society for the Blind at a Kings game time-out,” Diane said. “When I went down on the court to accept the donation, I discovered it was a $10,000 check. It was very cool.”
Since Diane accepted the check on court in March, the Golden 1 Center has asked Diane to be part of an interview with a national media outlet about the device.
“I had no idea from that original email I sent to OneCourt last year that it would turn into all this, but it’s so much fun,” she said.
For people with vision loss attending Kings games, Diane says go to guest services and ask them for one of the five OneCourt devices – and you will likely see her there using one as she attends games with her husband who she married last fall.
Diane said OneCourt is hoping more people will reach out to their favorite teams’ stadiums and encourage them to adopt the device.
When the opportunity came up to pre-order her own OneCourt home device, Diane and her husband immediately signed up. They can’t wait to receive the device in December and use it to sync with their television and radio to watch games at home, especially since OneCourt is now creating layovers for football and baseball, as well.
“It’s so exciting for the blind population because the home devices will now come with layovers for basketball, football and baseball so fans can watch all those sports,” Diane said. “It really opens up a new understanding of games, no matter how well you know a sport. It’s incredible for everyone and a different kind of breakthrough in technology than has been touched before.”
Check out this video of our Sacramento Kings OneCourt watch party in January