The Paralympics highlight the need for year-round activity to include people with disabilities in sports.
This is a summer of big sporting events in Europe, just about everywhere it seems—from the European Championships in football to the Olympic Games and the Paralympics in France, not to mention annual events such as the Tour de France and Wimbledon. While these major events trigger lots of excitement, emotions and unforgettable moments for fans and athletes, one question always accompanies them: what remains for society once they are over?
From the standpoint of inclusion, it is obvious that media attention to ‘disability issues’ is boosted by such events as the Paralympics. And the good news is that there was never so much live broadcasting of them as there will be in 2024.
Twenty years ago, the Athens Paralympics were broadcast for 617 hours in 25 countries. For this year’s edition, France Télévisions, the French public broadcaster, will provide 24-hour coverage. So one operator alone will offer 300 hours of live and on-demand coverage between August 28th and September 8th.
Apart of course from featuring the various competitions, the reporting will foreground figures from the Paralympic movement in France, such as the wheelchair fencer Cyril Moré and the swimmer Sami El Gueddari, who can act as role models for the disability community worldwide. Watching athletes with disabilities perform, and learning about their stories, helps to convey positive messages about what it means to live with a disability—including outside the world of sport—thereby helping fight stereotypes of, and negative attitudes towards, persons with disabilities.
Improving accessibility
Besides such positive portrayals, big sporting events also play their part in improving accessibility. In the first place, this is true for infrastructures such as physical access to stadia, the associated public transport and so on. In many places, new and fully accessible housing is built thanks to the Olympic and Paralympic games—a tangible legacy for individuals with disabilities once the games are over.
In recent years, organisers of sporting events have placed greater emphasis on other aspects too of making these accessible. Audio description (AD), low-vision helmets and tactile tablets to follow the action have increasingly become part of events, allowing blind and partially sighted spectators to enjoy them as much as everybody else.
For Paris 2024 AD will be provided in nine disciplines and made available through mobile phones via the games app (mainly for medal events). Among other innovations, the wheelchair basketball, wheelchair rugby, blind football and goalball competitions will also allow visually impaired spectators to follow the action through a vision pad—a tactile tablet which will enable them to experience the events in an immersive way through their fingertips.
Fostering inclusion
Of course, not every blind or partially sighted person can or wants to become a medal winner and sports must be used as a tool to foster inclusion beyond competitions. Yet, although some countries are making efforts to improve access to sporting activities, there is still much to be done—as the evidence shows.
Research underlines that 70 per cent of the information processed by our brains comes from vision. Clearly, being visually impaired alters one’s recognition of the physical environment and, therefore, the perception of one’s body in a physical space, affecting acquisition of basic motor skills, among others. And this is exacerbated by such barriers as lack of accessible facilities, absence of qualified staff and prejudices among the public.
As a blind runner, I experience some of these obstacles: if a running machine in a fitness studio is only equipped with touchscreens, how can I independently regulate the pace and timing of my session? I have to ask for help. But what if the staff who could support me are not trained to do so or are just too busy with other things?
Overall, blind and partially sighted people are less likely to take part in physical activities. The Royal National Institute of Blind People, the UK’s leading sight-loss charity, found in its 2021 ‘See Sport Differently‘ report that British visually impaired persons were twice as likely to be inactive as their sighted counterparts. Obviously, this has negative consequences for their overall wellbeing, including a major risk of being socially excluded.
Positive influence
This is why political authorities, stakeholders within sports and the general public should be more conscious of the benefits for people with visual impairment of practising sports. It’s about not only improving one’s physical condition but also enhancing self-esteem and developing social and interpersonal skills.
Ideally, promoting the positive influence of sports within the blindness and partial-sight community should be done in the first years of life. The sooner a blind or partially sighted person starts engaging with sporting activities, the better for their personal growth. Some organisations, such as the British Columbia Blind Sports and Recreation Association, have already thought through how to translate this into practice.
So my message to our communities across the world would be: put on your sports kit, tie up your trainers and let’s co-operate to make sports accessible for everybody. Our claim goes beyond being the first in reaching the finish line: enjoying physical activities in an inclusive way will be the greatest medal most of us will ever win in our lives.
Lars Bosselmann is executive director of the European Blind Union.