Digi's Footbraille lets blind fans feel football — Gold Kancil 2019

For Malaysia's 2019 Merdeka Day, telco Digi and agency Naga DDB Tribal unveiled Footbraille, a working prototype that lets visually impaired fans follow a football match in real time. The device looks like a small football pitch; beneath the artificial grass a miniature ball is wirelessly fed the tracked position of the real match ball and rolls in sync, so fans follow play by touch while a narrator describes the action.

Digi introduced it with a film showing members of the national blind football team, led by head coach Sunny, experiencing the famous 1980 Olympic qualifying match in which Malaysia beat South Korea 2-1 — a game that defined Malaysian football but which blind fans could only hear about. The build was a genuine cross-discipline effort: Barney Chua of Mojo Films helped originate the idea and Expedio Designs' Ang Tee Chian engineered the tracking and control system, developed from what the agency says began as a conversation at a mamak stall.

The Kancil Awards, Malaysia's biggest advertising awards, gave Footbraille the Gold in Experience Design in 2019, and Digi's agency Naga DDB Tribal was named Agency of the Year the same night.

Don't narrate the match louder — let fans touch the ball

The mechanism is verifiable by touch: the miniature ball moves with the real one, so the experience does not depend on descriptive skill or audio quality.

It rides an existing national ritual — Merdeka Day and the 1980 qualifying win — so the story needed no media spend to feel immediate to Malaysians.

Featuring the actual national blind football team and its coach made the prototype demonstrable on camera, not a concept film.

The idea doubles as the brand's own promise: Digi positioned its internet-and-technology mission as equal access for all Malaysians.

When a channel is closed to part of your audience, rebuild the medium instead of raising the volume. Digi spent the effort on a working touch-based prototype, and the device itself became the story.

Footbraille launched as a prototype on 28 August 2019 and headlined Digi's Merdeka Day film. It won Gold in Experience Design at the 2019 Kancil Awards and contributed to Naga DDB Tribal's Agency of the Year title; the trade press in Malaysia covered it as a product story rather than an ad, which is the outcome the agency said it was aiming for — ideas for brands that go beyond marketing.