Prof. Laura Misener
Director and Professor at the School of Kinesiology, Western University. Her research focuses on how sport and events can be use as instruments of social change, with an emphasis how sport for persons with a disability can positively impact community accessibility and social inclusion.
Email: lmisene@uwo.ca
A central agenda of the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games was to create an inclusive and accessible environment. There have been many news reports about the increased accessibility of the transportation network, the spectator experience around access for people with disabilities, and the accessibility improvements made to a very old and historic city. All these are really part of the requirements of hosting a large-scale international sporting event, but the Paralympic Games offers an increased focus on access issues. Accessibility is enshrined in the Paralympic values, and indeed in the mandate of hosting the Games. But often these issues are lost due to the over-reaching focus on the Olympic Games. Accessibility goes well beyond the field of play and Paris 2024 stepped up the challenge to do as much as they could with the resources brought in through hosting. Onsite, there were certainly features that have not been part of the landscape in that city previously – accessible trains, ramps for access, special venue sections for spectators, and support personnel onsite to help with access. There were also more features that supported accessible experiences such as audio description for some of the Paralympic events, tactile vision pads at some venues to follow the field of play, and low vision helmets at certain venues to support visually impaired experiences. These kinds of features are what visitors with disabilities at mega events should expect in terms of necessary and enhanced accessibility of an event. But there were also additional features in these Games that featured volunteers trained in supporting individuals with invisible disabilities, mobility cards to support priority transfers from airports, and an accommodation partner that offered accessible places to stay.
All the enhancements during the Games offer a better spectator, visitor, and athlete experience. These varied attempts to support the mission of an event that is more accessible and inclusive of persons with disabilities was apparent. Some sites offered excellent descriptions about classification and athletes enhancing spectator knowledge. Being onsite, it was hard not to notice the access features and see how there were genuine efforts being made, but also hard to miss the missteps. What remains unknown, is how long and what impact these access enhancements will really have on the landscape of Paris, the public consciousness around disability and disability related issues.
Ultimately, what will the legacy of accessibility and inclusion be post-Paris 2024. A number of festival sites offered opportunities people to try out the Paralympic sports, but not one of the sites visited had any information about how people might get involved in para sport, or even support para sport through volunteering or coaching. So, while the spectators access might be improved, will there be any leveraged effect of sport participation for people with disabilities? The literature is quite clear about the inspiration effect, only short term increased in participation will be felt by a host city and then will return to baseline – unless sport participation is leveraged in the post-Game euphoria. At this point, it remains unclear if there is an organization responsible for the ongoing potential impact of the events and how it will be managed? Even with the IOC doing legacy evaluations years after the Games, what is consequence of not delivering on these objectives?
Even with the added event related features around accessibility, these remain predominantly focused on narrow understandings of accessibility largely embedded in institutionalized ableism. Events occupy public and private spaces that remain predominantly developed through an ableist lens. It should not be lost of anyone who attends a large-scale event, that accessible sections for entry, seating, and services are mostly segregated spaces. We have yet to really developed our thinking around events that starts with universal design in mind. Why is that we applaud Paris 2024 for creating segregated seating spaces for wheelchair users, but if that same section was a ‘Blacks Only’ seating section, we would not have the same perspective. Strides have been made to create more inclusion and access through events such as Paris 2024, but there is still a long way to go before really dismantle the ableist perspectives of events. Scholars need to continue to interrogate the policy landscape that supports events, sports venues, media perspectives and many related sport structures. We also need to keep in mind that events such as Paris 2024 cannot be the answer to accessibility, but only one catalytic opportunity that puts the issues of access and inclusion in the minds of policy makers. How this catalyst propels the access and inclusion agenda forward in years to come will really be the marker of the impact.
