How FIFA Made The Club World Cup Accessible to All

In late May, FIFA announced this year’s FIFA Club World Cup would be “the most inclusive tournament ever” as tournament matches would be augmented with audio descriptions for Blind and low vision people. The ADC, or audio descriptive commentary, was first used by FIFA during the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, followed by the 2022 World Cup in Qatar and the 2023 Women’s World Cup held in Australia and New Zealand.

FIFA worked with disability inclusion company AccessibAll in producing the ADC.

Natalie Gross, FIFA’s accessibility coordinator, explained to me earlier this week—after the Club World Cup ended—in an interview part of her purview is “make the fan experience more accessible,” both digitally and in person at live events. Why her work matters, she told me, is everyone—disabled people included—use computers to find information on things—especially sports. There are “thousands and thousands of people getting online” to inform themselves, but what happens when the information isn’t accessible to them? No accessibility means no information, and that’s a major problem. It can be “alarming,” Gross said, for those in the disability community to face barriers like no screen reader support, captioning, or whatever other accommodation(s) they need. In a nutshell, her job entails ensuring those technologies are available to all.

“When it comes to tech and accessibility, those are the things that we’re [at FIFA] looking at digital accessibility,” Gross said. “That’s part of what I do… part of what I do is go through our [FIFA] app and make sure it’s accessible for everyone and they’re able to navigate through it without asking for help. That’s where we stand as far as accessibility with technology… I’m looking at whether folks are able to access it by themselves.”

The impetus for enriching the Club World Cup with audio descriptions began with FIFA’s fan operations team ruminating over ways in which to make the fan experience better, with Gross saying FIFA as an organization is “always researching and thinking about how to make the fan experience more enjoyable for everyone.” With audio descriptions’ steady rise in popularity, Gross said FIFA thought it befitting to enhance the tournament with them. She emphasized FIFA is “leading in that area” because there aren’t many people who are doing audio descriptions for live events. By contrast, audio descriptions are usually done in “post,” referring to the post-production process during which audio descriptive tracks are inserted by film editors. “I think part of what’s so cool about FIFA is we do try to get ahead of things,” Gross said. “We do try to say, ‘Okay, if we’re thinking about every single fan, what does that look like for us to give this person an experience versus them just showing up?’ That was the brain behind why we wanted to include audio descriptions. We want people to come in and say, ‘Okay, I didn’t miss anything.’”

As to AccessibAll’s role, Gross said the company proved instrumental by bringing in commentators and training them on how to provide proper audio descriptions. First and foremost, people had to have an earnest interest in soccer (or football or fútbol). It does neither announcer nor listener any favors if the person giving the descriptions is either (a) apathetic about soccer; and commensurately (b) knows next to nothing about the game. Gross, herself a fashionista who was behind the Not Your Inspiration line likened someone not understanding (or liking) soccer giving audio descriptions akin to someone who’s not at all interested in the fashion world doing the same work for a TV show like Netflix’s Emily in Paris. Again, such mismatches make no sense whatsoever.

“We had that same concept to doing audio description for live sports,” Gross said.

In technical terms, Gross told me the in-stadium audio descriptions were delivered by way of an app. Fans downloaded it prior to arriving at the venue, at which time it found their location and automatically connected to the feed. As a troubleshooting matter, users had the ability to enter a short code to connect if they had issues, with Gross telling me FIFA’s app is “fairly easy to use.” Gross acknowledged the audio descriptions weren’t available to fans watching at home on television, but said it’s something FIFA is “thinking through and having conversations around” accessibility for future touneys.

Feedback on the audio descriptions has been positive, according to Gross. She told me many of her friends who, like her, are part of the Blind community raved about the experience. Gross said her friends reported being “so excited for once to know what was going on on the pitch and to be included.” Better yet, many of her friends aren’t soccer fans, but when they went to matches, they ended up having a really good time.

“Not only is FIFA making an experience more enjoyable for people who are already fans, but we have the opportunity to create fans who may not have understood what was going on,” Gross said of the impact of FIFA’s efforts. “They weren’t excited about it [before], but now that they can get involved and hear everything that’s going on, there’s an opportunity for us to build new fans. That makes me excited about the future.”

Looking towards the future, Gross demurred when I asked if FIFA was setting a standard with its audio descriptions. Instead, she said it’s more apt to say FIFA is “setting an example” and sets a tone for bringing more accessibility to live sporting events. A common misconception, she added, is people with disabilities don’t like sports; especially for the Blind and low vision community, people (like yours truly) would like sports more were they accessible. Tech is uniquely suited to address inaccessibility, as Gross told me a disabled fan is just like any other if given the right access. Attending live sporting events should be fun, Gross said, and it’s that fun “vibe” that she hopes will be caught by other institutions who see FIFA’s work. NBC Sports did work on accessibility for last year’s Olympic and Paralympic Games in Paris. I posted a feature story last September on the network’s efforts to further disability inclusion, which included interviews with NBC Sports senior producer Alexa Pritting and others. Elsewhere, ESPN’s Sam Boden covered the nexus of accessibility and live sports last year. (Full disclosure: Boden asked my participation, but my insights didn’t make the final story.)

Gross noted working on accessibility, as ever, is an evergreen endeavor by saying “there’s always room for improvement.” She said FIFA is already holding internal discussions about said improvements ahead of next summer’s World Cup here in the United States. Technology is “constantly changing,” Gross said, so what next year will entail isn’t yet known. Nonetheless, Gross said she and team are “excited to jump into the work and see what [accessibility is] going to look like for our tournament next year.”

Chelsea beat Paris Saint-Germain 3-0 in this year’s Club World Cup final in New York.