When I was in college I took a course called Therapeutic Recreation. The foundation of this class was to help us learn how to teach different subcultures of people how to recreate. A few examples of these subculture would be those in rehabilitation, stroke victims, prisoners, autism, and the blind. The last subculture is what I want to focus on today. The blind. I bet you did not know the blind can play baseball and tennis. They can. They use something called a "beep" ball.The blind tennis game consists of a foam ball that beeps as it goes through the air. A blind person will play on a shortened tennis court with raised lines.
How is all of this possible? Most of us have always heard keep your "eye on the ball" when learning tennis. You need to be able to track the ball with your eyes to see the pace, spin, and contact point. What allows blind people to play tennis through these adaptations, and now those of us with healthy vision, is the visual cortex of the brain can also process tactile and auditory information. In other words, you can use other senses to determine objects in space. I wonder how much better we would be if we would start training some of our other senses to help us play tennis? Interesting thought.
Lin, Thomas. Tennis Magazine. "Blind Ambition: Organizers working to grow the remarkable sport of blind tennis." Dec. 2014
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