Disability in the sports world: Why we are still not inclusive enough
In a fast-moving world where unique talents and motivational stories can be quickly shared on platforms like social media and have the potential to become a viral phenomenon, an athlete’s story can serve as an inspiring example for a great amount of people in the world.
But if this was done to every single athlete, it would take away from their actual achievement and make them disappear in a sea of similar story approaches, right?
Changing the narrative
“Meet the Superhumans”, “One of the most inspiring ads ever” and “We’re the superhumans” are the headlines you encounter when looking up trailers to the previous Paralympic Games.
While some of the athletes’ stories are – indeed – inspiring and disabled athletes’ abilities often seem to scratch the surface of what the common individual would consider impossible, they remain just as human as able-bodied people.
And like them, they want their performances to be critically evaluated in the same ways.
In the past, multiple cases occurred of disabled athletes complaining about how they are being portrayed in the media and how their stories are being told.
These mostly include the previously mentioned stories about how every story about disabled athletes is labelled as inspiring, athletes’ adaptions to push the limits make them superhumans, and athletes with prosthetics are called cyborgs.
Especially the latter is popular among coverage as the fascination with prosthetics sometimes almost borders into obsession as many able bodied people are only used to a similar sight in superhero movies. However, this would also add to the superhuman narrative.
Therefore it is important to treat these subjects delicately and – in the best case – ask the athletes how they prefer to be portrayed.
On top of that, journalists are called out for usually portraying disabled athletes in an overly positive light, calling their performance a great achievement even when they were not at their best.
This is additionally backed up by research papers which found that the portrayal of disability in Channel 4’s “We’re the Superhumans” (2016) “obscures the meaning of the term, and objectifies disabled characters through devaluation”.
Even though the platforms’ intentions were to “change public attitudes towards disability, they relied on stereotypes and on what comedian and disability advocate Stella Young labeled as “inspiration porn”.”
There’s more to disability sports than the Paralympics
Every four years, the Paralympic Games are set up as one of the greatest sporting events alongside the Olympics. High-production advertisements are leading up to the event. While the media coverage has improved a lot in recent years – in quantity as well as quality using the appropriate terms and having genuine interactions with the athletes – there is still a lot of room for improvement.
But after the explosion in coverage, after the big event, the world seems to forget about disabled athletes for another four years until the next Paralympics take place. Small exceptions include the Invictus Games and the Special Olympics (also held every four years).
“The media need to learn that we don’t just appear every four years at the Paralympics, we are competing and qualifying throughout”, journalist and former wheelchair tennis player Gemma Stevenson highlighted the issue at the Sports Media Identity Network event in February aiming at discussions around how to attract more sports journalists with disabilities to newsrooms and sporting events.
Even when some people want to look for subsequent events involving disabled athletes, they often do not know where to look. The BBC has compiled the “Disability sport calendar” including the most important dates. However, there seems to be few to no news at all about disability sports on the front pages of sport media news outlets.
Lack of diversity in newsrooms
On the other side, behind the television lens or the desktop, sports journalists with disabilities are facing similar problems.
Stevenson stated that it is absolutely necessary for young athletes as well as journalists to see people with disabilities executing certain jobs in order to make it a normality.
To have a role model and see your dreams being realised in front of you is the most powerful manner to create enthusiasm and longevity over time.
The sentiment already starts at the grassroots with disabled students often being left out from physical education classes. Reasons include teachers not knowing how to handle these kinds of situation and therefore disabled students not feeling included in PE classes.
At the same time, they are very limited to having role models that look and feel the same way they do.
Channel 4 News reporter and talkSPORT presenter Jordan Jarrett-Bryan, who was also present at the networking event, added: “As I see it there are three options: we either wait for organic growth, apply pressure to the leaders of the industry or we build our own spaces within the space.”
An example for the latter is Nate Williams’ “The Ability Group in Sport” (TAGS) with the mission of “helping the next generation of disabled people in sports media roles” as the first UK network for disabled people working in the sports industry.
The network is demanding a “PIECE of the action” to not only promote disabled people and improve accessibility but also educate others in order to collaborate and encourage the conversation.
We have seen it all before
One more reason for the deficient inclusion of sports journalists with disabilities is the general lack of diversity in newsrooms. We are currently only just managing to include more women, people of colour and members of the LGBTQ+ community in newsrooms even though this is still a hot topic with no finish line in sight as of now.
People with disabilities are still left behind. It should not be about them trying to adapt to a certain environment. It is about what the newsrooms and companies can do to make it easier for them.
This starts with accessibility and a change of sentiment. It seems like similar to previous efforts to achieve more diversity in the industry, people with disabilites have to walk the same walk as them in order to change the situation.
In a perfect world employers will not look at a candidates’ gender, race, sexual orientation, or if they are disabled. Instead, they look at a person’s skills first and what they can add to their vision.
Instead of dragging this process any longer and making it more difficult, change has to happen now. All of us – in front of the TV, reading the newspaper, or behind the camera, writing articles – we have to do better!
To once more quote Stevenson:
“Nothing about us without us. Involve us and we can help you change the game.”
