Audible basketball could one day put visually impaired athletes on the court

By Muhammad Waheed
Baltimore Watchdog Staff Writer

When Michael Bullis was growing up in Portland, Oregon, in the 1950s his gym teacher didn’t know what to do with him.

Like any other kid in elementary school, Bullis wanted to play sports with his classmates. He enjoyed basketball and routinely asked his gym teacher for a ball that he could bounce against a cement wall.

But Bullis had one problem: He is blind. And keeping track of the ball was anything but easy.

Today, the 65-year-old Baltimore City resident is designing a new audible basketball that he hopes will allow blind and visually impaired athletes to play sports with their sighted peers.

Bullis said his new invention is important because the balls on the market today that are adapted for the visually impaired do not bounce or roll well.

“They’re not exactly like what your neighbor friends are going to play with if you’re a blind kid,” said Bullis, who is the executive director of the Image Center of Maryland that serves individuals with disabilities. “My idea has always been that if you’re a blind kid, what you want to do is you want to be able to play with your neighbor kids that are sighted and in order to do that you have to have a ball that’s like their ball.”

Bullis said that he first started working on the audible ball project in 2004 or 2005 while working with engineering students from Johns Hopkins University. The team added a speaker that made high pitched sounds to a Spalding infusion basketball.

Bullis worked on the project on and off for several years until he was contacted by a group of people from the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology in 2008 or 2009. The group was working on its own audible ball and wanted to exchange research with Bullis.  This group was working on a similar concept as Bullis except that its basketball used a speaker that made a buzzing sound. Bullis said the ball developed by the Rose-Hulman group was also more durable.

Bullis said he discussed his ideas with the group and asked if they could improve on what was available at that time. The group finished its project in 2010, but not much came of the ball. Then, in 2017 they contacted Bullis to see if he still wanted to pursue the project.

He did.

The ball developed by the group had microcircuitry, sound programing, a tiny battery and a speaker, Bullis said.

“We’re actually working now on a way to cover the hole that we’re going to put in the basketball so that the hole is protected by the surface of the basketball,” Bullis said. “We’re going to put some holes in here so that the sound can get out. Then I think we’re going to be done with this project. We’re going to be ready to go to market.”

Several tests were conducted on the ball, which was then demonstrated at The Maryland School for the Blind during an event on March 2, Bullis said.

The project has run into a few hiccups along the way. A few days before the demonstration at MSB, Bullis was testing the ball when its speaker broke. The setback changed the nature of the March 2 demonstration, with those in attendance discussing how to move the project forward.

“There is a speaker that sticks out of the ball,” Bullis said. “It’s somewhat recessed, but it’s not recessed far enough apparently and so the ball hit just on that speaker and it snapped it off.”

Future audible balls will have their speakers recessed deeper into the ball, but the challenge will be not blocking out too much sound while maintaining a durable build, Bullis said.

Bullis said that he doesn’t have a timeframe for the next steps in creating an audible ball for the blind, but he does not intend to quite.

In addition to the Rose-Hulman Institute, Bullis has gotten help from several other people.

About a year ago, he said, Gary Williams, 39, and a basketball coach, got in touch with Bullis through email to collaborate on the project. Williams wanted to focus on making other areas of the sport more accessible to the visually impaired, Bullis said.

“He’s extremely passionate about it and he’s so driven, you know, I think he dwells a lot on childhood remembering what it was like to want to participate and not being able to,” Williams said.

Williams said that Bullis wants to provide blind individuals with opportunities that he didn’t have growing up as a kid.

Williams said he was inspired to work on the project by his aunt and uncle who are visually impaired.

“I think everyone should be able to enjoy something that they love and for kids that are sight impaired they want the opportunity to participate in the same sports as other kids,” Williams said. “To have the ability to potentially allow them to do that just warms my heart.”

Peter Acosta, 63, blind and a member of the National Federation of the Blind, was one the individuals asked for feedback on the audible ball project.

“As a blind person I realize the limitations that blind people have when it comes to sports involving a ball,” Acosta said. “You can’t tell where the ball is so having an audible ball opens up a whole new world for blind people.”

Acosta is thankful for the Bullis’ efforts with the audible ball project.

“Michael is really on top of this and has some incredible ideas for this ball and he’s the kind of guy that if you have an idea and you’re trying to make something happen he is an excellent person to contact for that because when he thinks about something he really thinks it through,” Acosta said.

Acosta said that Bullis is very positive, even when things don’t work out, such as the recent testing of the audible ball project.

“I’ll feel wonderful,” Bullis said. “The first time I see a blind person who can play basketball by themselves, shoot some hoops, run and catch the ball, grab the ball out of the air or go find the ball after it flew away somewhere I will feel wonderful. I’d feel like we’ve accomplished something significant and important.”