Barriers Affecting Disabled People in Sport

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Barriers for Disabled People in Sport

People with disabilities have much to offer the world of sport. As well as the top disabled sportspeople, there are many ordinary disabled people who can and do benefit from sport. Sport allows everybody to stay healthy and to meet people. However, people with disabilities do face serious obstacles to participation in sport. Society continues to discriminate against, handicap and impose barriers on disabled people. Also it is interesting to know that as much as three quarters of disabled adults rely on state benefits as their main source of income they are also financially disadvantaged, which multiples barriers to participation. The ‘disabled’ are not all the same, but a mixture of people with a range of disabilities including deafness, sight impairment, amputation, paraplegia, cerebral palsy and learning difficulties.

Elite athletes with a disability competed for the first time for medals in the Commonwealth Games in 2002, but much more still needs to be done if disabled people are to enjoy the same sporting opportunities as the rest of the population. A survey taken out by Sport England in the same year reveals that people with disabilities must overcome significant problems if they are to enjoy anything like the same access to sporting activity s the non-disabled population. Amongst the results, Sport England discovered that just over 50% of the disabled population had taken part in any kind of sporting activity in the last month before the survey. This is 24% less than non-disabled people. Looking at the experiences of disabled people who take part in sport, the study found that: Of those disabled adults who participated in sport in the 12 months before the survey, 65% would like to play more. Also a negative experience in sport due to their health problem or disability was reported by 14% of disabled adults.

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The overall conclusion of the report is that rather than concentrating on increasing the supply of suitable facilities or providing adapted equipment, which have been the usual responses to this problem, more needs to be done to provide people with a disability with credible information on the sports and physical activities that they might be able to do given the nature of their disability. There are currently seven national disability sports associations, which are united by the English Federation of Disability Sport, a charity founded in 1999. The associations are: Disability Sport England (DSE), British Deaf Sports Council, British ...

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