Blind Paralympian, Will Norman, looks back at his experiences of life with a disability and as the summer of sport continues, shares his views on how disabled people still face major obstacles every day with sport still an area where we need to make massive strides for greater social inclusion.
A recent report from blind Children UK revealed that the number of children being registered as visually impaired in the UK has risen by 9% since 2006, largely as a result of improved survival rates for premature babies. As a Paralympian with the GB blind football team, and the father of a wonderful little boy who himself has a visual impairment, I found myself wondering how the next generation’s experiences may differ from my own. As another momentous sporting summer unfurls, will our society help or hinder my son in his dream of one day playing football for England?
25 years ago, I tried out for the football team at my primary school. Sporting a lovely pair of Dunlop ‘green flash’, I tentatively pushed open the classroom door where the young hopefuls had been asked to convene. The derisory guffaws that drowned me in a wave of shame and embarrassment that day came from the teacher, not the kids. It was often like this at school. I had as many problems with the staff as I did with my peers when it came to my disability, and this was nowhere more pronounced than during the weekly torment of PE.
Change
Of course, a lot has changed since 1989. The good news is that in the last couple of years alone, increased funding, and the afterglow of the 2012 London Paralympics, has helped create something of a bounce in disability sport. But some problems do stubbornly remain. Research from the English Federation of Disability Sport suggests that only half of disabled people enjoy PE at school. The picture varies from disability to disability, with visually impaired people far less likely to enjoy PE; a mere 35%.
There are a lot of excellent initiatives in this area, but the problem with too strong a focus on funding and project-work is that it detracts from the fundamental core of the issue: people. A training programme, no matter how excellent, can sometimes create the impression that the issue it addresses is ‘other’, because the training itself is, by definition, supplementary. These initiatives are all vital for developing and sharing best practice, but they are not, in themselves, the solution to the problem. For a sustainable solution, that doesn’t ebb and flow with the vagaries of funding and the findings of the latest research, all this good work needs to be underpinned by an attitudinal shift on a social level. The good news is that this is simpler than it sounds: all that’s required is an open mind.
Willing
An open mind embraces otherness. A willing imagination will engage with the variables that are presented to it, not seek to siphon the world in to arbitrary categories of ‘normal’ and ‘additional’. A teacher who has a disabled child in their PE class shouldn’t need to wait for training to tell them how to react. The answer is simple: start a conversation.
Disabled children in school have a right to expect that their school will help them meet their full potential, in all subjects, not just a limited version of that potential, bounded and constricted by shortcomings in their educational environment. Furthermore, at an individual level, we should all be prepared to have a dialogue with those around us, rather than relying on information packs and one-day training courses to teach us how to talk to each other. If the excellent recent progress in research and project development in disability sport can be pinned to a simultaneous attitudinal shift in the very bedrock of our society, then perhaps there’s hope that my son won’t have to fight the good fight to get where he wants to go in life, because by then he may find the coalition of the willing is everywhere, all around him, not just isolated in pockets of best practice.
About Will Norman
Will Norman’s first international cap was against Spain in 2008 and he has since represented England and Great Britain over 25 times. Will is passionate about improving social inclusion amongst young disabled people.
