Sports CONNECT

Tennis Australia has successfully progressed through to reach Sports CONNECT Gold status. Only four sports have reached Gold status in this program indicating the Australian Sports Commission's confidence in Tennis Australia's ability to develop programs for people with a disability.

Sports CONNECT is Tennis Australia's banner program, which encompasses all of Tennis Australia's programs for people with a disability.

Sports CONNECT focuses on breaking down the barriers in sport through the following four focus areas:
Disability education
Accreditation
Classification
Athlete Support
A National Action Plan has been written in consultation with key stakeholders outlining the above four focus areas. From this Member Associations have developed their own State/Territory Action Plan's based on the National Plan.

Sports CONNECT is a great tool that has enabled Tennis Australia to further develop programs for people with a disability.

Tennis Australia, with the support of the Australian Sports Commission and the Australian Paralympic Committee, is committed to Sports CONNECT's Mission of creating tennis pathways for players with a disability by breaking down the barriers to participation within tennis.

With the use of Sports CONNECT's four key focus areas of disability education, accreditation, classifier support and training and athlete support, Tennis Australia aims to:
Identify and develop pathways, networks and structures to provide opportunities for people with a disability to compete and achieve their full potential at all levels.
Ensure players with a disability are seen as a tennis player and to reinforce their ability and skill level rather than their disability.
Integrate people with a disability within tennis clubs/centres and associations.
Educate club administrators, coaches, umpires and players on the opportunities available for integrating people with a disability within their club/centre or association.
Develop and coordinate programs for people with a disability.

Find more at http://www.tennis.com.au/Pages/default.aspx?id=4&pageId=232

Plessis talks the cricket he can't see

Zimbabwe-born Dean du Plessis, 32, is probably the most hard-working man in the cricket world. He doesn't bat or bowl, but vividly describes sporting action he has never seen. Du Plessis is one of a kind: A blind cricket commentator bringing the game to life on your radio and TV. Hearing him, you wouldn't know he has two glass eyes, was born with tumours in both his retinas. His description of strokes and deliveries is faultless. A report in The Times, London says Du Plessis has an accentuated sense of hearing which makes up for his lack of vision. He has reportedly shared the commentary box with the likes of Ravi Shastri, Geoffrey Boycott, Tony Cozier and the one-eyed Bruce Yardley and in 2004, he and Yardley became the first commentary team to deliver with just one eye between them! "Wired up to the stump microphones, (du Plessis) can tell who is bowling from the footfalls and grunts, a medium or fast delivery by the length of time between the bowler's foot coming down and the impact of the ball on the pitch. He picks up a yorker from the sound of the bat ramming down on the ball, can tell if a ball is on the off or on-side, and when it has hit pad rather than bat," says the report.

He has done the job since 2001 and has sat in the commentary box for all Test-playing nations' matches. Du Plessis is a regular at the Twenty20s as well. Incidentally, du Plessis hated the 'blind cricket' he was taught as a child. Intuition helps du Plessis Zimbabwe's Dean du Plessis, who is the only blind cricket commentator to have covered Tests, ODIs and even Twenty20 games, is one of a kind. Wired to the stump camera, his keen sense of hearing and cricketing intelligence enables him to decipher the on-field action. During a recent Bangladesh-Zimbabwe game, he heard that the Bangladesh captain had sent a batsman down to fine leg after Zimbabwe batsman Charles Coventry had smashed a four. "A sixth sense told me it was a double bluff," Dean told the Times, "He wanted to give the impression that the next ball would be a bumper, to make Coventry use a hook shot." Naturally, the next Bangladeshi delivery was a yorker! "The thing about Dean is the intuition," former Zimbabwe batsman Andy Pycroft told the Times, "The public love to listen to him. If he has the right person at anchor to support him, he is brilliant."

Posted from http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/sports/cricket/top-stories/Plessis-talks-the-cricket-he-cant-see/articleshow/5004338.cms

Miss Ability

Ever whistled at a woman in a wheelchair? Checked out the boobs of a blind babe? Flirted with a gal who has difficulty walking? This is the tagline used by Absolutely Independent, producers of the original reality TV show, Miss Ability. Twelve young women with disabilities ‘visible to the naked eye’ participate in different events in front of a panel of judges.

The twelve contestants appear before the judges in casual wear, evening wear, swim suits and lingerie/nightgowns. They are interviewed by a top journalist to prove they have what it takes to be an Ability Ambassador, must participate in a full fashion shoot with a top photographer in which the contestants must prove their abilities as a model and make a short film in which they show how they overcame their disabilities. After all this, the judges select the final four contestants. The final four contestants then give another speech and the winner is chosen by the viewing public.

The Dutch producer of the show, Jacco Doombus, insists that the shock value of a show like this is what made it a smash success. Says Doombus, “Miss Ability isn't meant to be 'ethical,’ but is meant to be a bomb! The programme generates discussion among the viewers on how we in society are looking at disabled people and how we 'qualify' them in our minds. If you want to create a change in societies perception / public opinion of disabled persons, and how people threat a disabled person, you have to throw a bomb first ... to make people think and talk."

Read more: http://disabilities.suite101.com/article.cfm/miss_ability#ixzz0QY35aBLt

The Possibilities

Hey Friends!

This is first time I myself am writting my own thoughts in this blog. This blog I have created for me and others to see the individuals as achievers, contributors, human being with emotion and desires of a normal being and not look at their impairment and disabilities. In my experience generally we, the beings without impairments view only the impairments in a person if we at all notice them and then discard them as a non entity. If at all we take note of them we invoke the 'charitable being' in us. We leave our capacity and capabilities to see and treat them as equal (with immense ability and creativity) somewhere back in the last drawer of our consciousness.

Their disadvantage is not due to their personal impairment, but the inaccessible world we have built for them and prohibit them to be part of a normal life. So Disability is not what they need to overcome, it is for us to notice the Barriers and Remove.

Any human being including those with impairments have amazing abilities. Its only a matter of opportunities for those to manifest. My endeavour is to bring the stories of abilities and opportunities in one place.

Thanks to all the readers. Do join me celebrating the abilities & opportunities and encouraging those who need inspiration.

'Wine, Bed and Roses' By Phyllis Rappaport.

I am sitting in my new electric double bed. It is Friday 3rd April. I am sipping a glass of red wine with cheese and biscuits. The roses are coming. The coffee is here and with Pavorotti singing masterly in the background.

Such indulgence may first appear extravagant. I have been waiting the best part of a year to get this electric bed through PADP, (Program & Appliances for Disabled People). The problem was that the present guidelines of PADP did not allow the program to purchase a bed of this kind, in a double size of my choice. They could fund single or three-quarter size beds but not the double. The double size in such a bed was not considered to be basic equipment that would aid or enhance my mobility. Even though I am a married woman. I have been married for some thirty years.

This lineal attitude doesn't allow disabled people as myself to be perceived and seen as adult sexual intelligent free choosing people who are living in stable marital relationships.

My husband is my carer and in both these roles he suffered from the 'public exposure' of our lives and the inconvenience and stresses the additional time and 'labour' it took in getting the bed to the coalface. Married or not, the size of bed should have been my own free choice. I consider the Health Professionals did not give to me the respect and rights that they would have accorded to a non-disabled married woman.

A bed is a much more personalised space for a person with a disability, than even a wheelchair, and that personal space may be shared with another person, who may or may not be the carer/spouse/partner of the person with a disability. It must be remembered that people with disabilities are not asexual people.

In my case the price of the bed wasn't a great deal more between the three-quarter and the double size. It seemed to be systemic guideline that the PADP Program felt they could not alter. Was it because that change in the guidelines would inevitably bring about a need by the Health Sector to perceive and seen people with disabilities in a whole new light? Oh! They are equal to us now. They are really the same as us. In other words, by this gauge, we, people with disabilities, are normal.

Each one of us needs to be recognised as human beings with intelligence, talents, and gifts to give and receive from others. If this recognition does not take place then our very state of being is invalidated. We all need to be recognised as people. We have to recognise humanness in ageing, disability colour or ethnic and religious difference.

If the Health Professionals and the Program 'Makers' turned around their thinking of 'People with Disabilities' as being equal in the eyes of society, as people standing, sitting, alongside these other people with professions, in expertisms. This would quickly require a new ideology for sharing of ideas and experiences between these two sets of people who are now equal without superiority over the other.

People who have disabilities have a wealth of experience to share with those in society who are not disabled. It is only by sharing and giving out to other people that we can receive experiences and knowledge that will enlighten our thinking.

As a British writer, Simon Brissenden, as envisaged for people with disabilities for true holistic independence, he writes:

"The point is that independentPeople who have controlOver their lives, not that theyPerform every task themselves. Independence is not linkedTo the physical or intellectualCapacity to care for oneselfWithout assistance; independenceIs created by having assistanceWhen and how one requires it."

For the original and full article http://www.wwda.org.au/wine.htm

Women Entrepreneurs with disAbilities

In 2001 the International Labour Organization working with the Ethiopian Federation of Persons with Disabilities (EFPD) and the Tigray Disabled Veterans Association (TDVA) began a project to "to promote economic empowerment among women with disabilities and women with disabled dependants, by providing training in micro-enterprise skills, arranging access to vocational skills training and credit and supporting the women to start a business activity or develop an existing one." Before they began to develop the curriculum, they wanted to assess the current state of micro-enterprise for women with disabilities. EFDP and TDVA sought out stories from women with disabilities who were already running micro-businesses. The resulting booklet "Doing Business in Addis Ababa: Case Studies of Women Entrepreneurs with Disabilities in Ethiopia" is a fascinating and thorough picture of the challenges and successes of women with disabilities in both urban (Addis Ababa) and rural (Tigray Region) communities.

The booklet is divided into six sections: one each on "women with visual impairments, women with hearing impairments, women with mobility impairments, women who have had leprosy, and mothers of children with learning disabilities." Within each section there is a brief introductory summary followed by 5 case studies.

While nearly all the women were very poor and struggling financially, they had all successfully transitioned from being dependents of other family members to, in nearly all cases, becoming the primary financial support for their extended families. Many of the women in the book were unable to attend school or stay in school and many were illiterate. Yet the women profiled were industrious, patient and had justifiable pride in their work and their ability to support other family members.

Reproduced from http://www.disabilityworld.org/04-05_04/employment/ethiopia.shtml

Modeling Competition For Women With Disabilities

The New York Daily News reports that a new modeling show has come to town, this one called Britain’s Missing Top Model. The U.K. show features models with various disabilities, like missing limbs, partial paralysis, and hearing loss. The show wants to challenge society’s traditional notions of beauty, which sounds great to me, but I also know that none of these women are going to be bigger than a size four, so that’s a standard of beauty no one is really willing to face yet either. Anyway, Marie Claire U.K. editor Marie O’Riordan serves as a judge for Missing Top Model, and says, “I do believe the program could help challenge our attitudes to disability. I want to see the winner shake up the fashion industry. These young women shouldn’t be invisible to the fashion world just because they are disabled.

Originally posted in http://www.thefrisky.com/post/246-modeling-competition-for-women-with-disabilities