AMERICAN GIVING | Strengthening communities through generosity
11 April 2008
Athlete Works to Broaden Access for Those with Disabilities
Says access for all is a human right
Washington -- When soccer (football) player Eli Wolff was 2 years old, he suffered a stroke that left him with a slight limp and a weak left arm.
Yet the stroke did not affect his athletic competitiveness. At age 18, while a student at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, he competed at the 1995 Pan American Games for the Disabled, helping the United States defeat Brazil.
At those games, Wolff saw the athletic determination of his teammates with physical impairments caused by traumatic brain injury, cerebral palsy and stroke. They wanted a chance to train and be coached, to have access to athletic facilities and be recognized for their accomplishments.
Wolff decided to get involved. A founder of the Disability in Sport program of the Center for the Study of Sport in Society at Northeastern University in Boston, Wolff helped draft a section on sports that appears in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
He said he communicated with sports groups around the world to get their input.
The convention calls for nations to create laws and other measures to include people with disabilities in recreational, leisure and sporting activities, Wolff said.
"Sport allows individuals to excel, despite the odds, and compete with others on an even playing field. The importance of equal opportunity and access to sport is essential for persons with disabilities to return to normality," in the words of an introductory statement to the convention by the special adviser to the United Nations secretary-general on sport for development.
"Initiatives such as the Disability and Sport Program, led by Eli Wolff … have tried to increase opportunities for people with disabilities by making mainstream sports more inclusive and by increasing support for disability sports. The program has also encouraged scholars to pursue more research and scholarship about social issues concerning sport and people with disabilities," said Howard Nixon of Towson University, near Baltimore.
Wolff wants organized sports -- recreational, amateur and professional -- to incorporate divisions that include athletes with disabilities. For instance, he suggests track events for blind runners and amputees, and a college wheelchair basketball league.
However, he said the Paralympics -- which are for athletes with physical disabilities -- are separate from the Olympics, with separate events. (Another set of events, the Special Olympics, are for athletes with "intellectual" disabilities, according to the organization's Web site.)
"Olympians with disabilities compete at the highest level in their appropriate category of sport. This standard is no different than that applied to Olympians without disabilities. Just as there are appropriate and accepted male and female categories of able-bodied Olympic sport, sports for athletes with disabilities are categories of sport, Wolff said.
“We recognize that sport can be a powerful instrument for social change,” according to a Sport in Society statement.
Through research, education and advocacy activities, Sport in Society is advancing access, inclusion, equality and respect for people with disabilities in both sport and society.
"Sport for persons with physical disabilities has developed significantly in recent years, yet the full recognition of such sport as a category of sport integral to the Olympic Movement has yet to be achieved," Wolff said.
The 2008 Summer Paralympic Games, the 13th Paralympics, will be held in Beijing September 6-17.
