Disability and Sports Blog

             It is frequently said that the internet allows us to have access to all the answers you could imagine. Considering we have our phones right at our fingertips, that seems reasonable to say. However, have you ever tried to find adaptive sports near you?  When trying to find sporting clubs or events for athletes with a hearing or visual impairment nearby, it may seem impossible. From my own experience, I used a bunch of different online searches to try and find local adaptive sporting events. Every time I tried the results were not what I was looking for. It became frustrating to try and find these events when the search engine said exactly what I was looking for with no answers. I could only imagine how discouraging that may feel for someone looking for groups to be involved in.  Luckily, Move United had the perfect way to search for adaptive sports. Using this search engine I was able to find local sporting clubs that include athl...

  In the 2000 Summer Paralympics there were 120 nations and 3,881 athletes competing in 551 events happening within 18 different sports.  Although these numbers seem rather high, there would be a dramatic decrease in participation for the following years. This devastating decrease was due to the removal of athletes with intellectual disabilities.  Athletes that have an intellectual disability were not allowed to participate in the Paralympics for some time due a cheating scandal that occurred in the Sydney Paralympic Games in 2000.  Shortly after the Spanish basketball team had won the gold medal in the 2000 Summer Paralympics, it was discovered that several members of the winning team had faked their impairments in order to gain an advantage over the other teams. This cheating scandal had eliminated the entire category for athletes with intellectual impairments in the Paralympics for the next few games.  This cheating scandal had shocked the Paralympics com...

  Living in America has always highlighted the importance of representing your country. Since elementary school, what it means to be an American has always been a topic heavily discussed. When it comes to our history with other countries, America is always represented as a strong and independent nation. With this being said, the discussion of other countries is not so similar, and is often debated.  A discussion of other countries that is often debated is whether or not Russia and Belarus should be allowed to participate in the Paralympics or the Olympics. There are many concerns from many countries about allowing Russia and Belarus to participate in both of the games. Some of the biggest concerns include the political ramifications, calculations about marketing, and morality. Since other countries struggle with this topic, there are many worries about how the decision will reflect these nations. Considering there are many unacceptable things that Russia and Belarus have done,...

  Inclusivity is always encouraged. Right?   So far, there has been a theme of including people with disabilities to be included in athletic events and sports, such as the Paralympics . However, what happens when you look from the other perspective? Should Paralympic sports be inclusive?  Should all athletes with any type of disability be allowed to classify for every sport? These questions typically follow the topic of inclusivity in the Paralympics. Immediately after reading these questions, I felt like the Paralympics are one of the best ways to represent inclusivity. People with all different types and levels of disabilities are allowed a way to participate in sports, just like the Olympics. Creating the Paralympics was to create an inclusive environment where people could participate in the sport they love despite having a disability.  However, when I read the question again I began to think. People without a disability are not allowed to participate in the Para...

               In my opinion, I do think that adaptive technology should be allowed in sports. I believe that one of the biggest parts of sports as a whole is being a part of a community or team. Creating an environment of inclusivity would involve every kind of athlete to participate. If athletes needs to have adaptive technology in order to participate in a sport, they should be able to participate in that sport.  Adaptive technology allows for an increase of participation for athletes with a disability. There are already multiple different categories for the Paralympic athletes in order to create fair competition depending on the type of disability the athlete may have. Check out the different category classifications here: https://www.paralympic.org/athletics/classification Therefore, I believe they could create other categories to create ways to avoid having unfair competitions. However allowing adaptive technology would require e...

This past week was the first time since the start of this semester that I had ever seen a Paralympic post on social media. Before learning about the Paralympics in this class, I had never even heard the word before.   For me, it was an exciting moment to finally see people in the disabled community being represented on social media. It was almost as exciting as the time my sister was featured on the Nasdaq screen in Times Square. Having these two experiences and now the prompt of media issues with disabled sports made me realize that there should be an increase in media coverage for the Paralympics as well as other disabled sports, but this raises the question: How?  Media coverage for people with disabilities in general has been rather small. In the white paper published by the Fords Foundation “Road Map for Inclusion: Changing the Face of Disability in Media,” there was one particular quote that stuck out to me. Judith Huemann writes,  “It is no longer acceptable to n...