Welcome to the art of Judo related to Disabilities
Disabled defined
"A Disability is any long lasting and serious personal participation pro-blem, caused by the interaction between an functional disorder or mental, intellectual, physical, motorial or sensorial activities in executing personal and external factors."
Disability looked from medical and social perspective
There are several ways to treat a human being with a disability the two most know are the medical- and the social perspective.
The medical perspective starts with the cause without taking into consideration the social environment in which the person lives.
In such an approach, it is obvious that the person with a disability is not seen as an individual but as an object. There is no consideration in the structure of the consequences the disability causes in society .
The research of Rigaux (2000) leads to the conclusion that this perspective is still often used.
A social perspective leads to a wider approach, in which the circumstances of the environment are linked to the disability of the individual.
One can’t keep up the differences between the medical and social perspective: there is no strict border between those two concepts. Al joined model leads to a more differentiated picture: Where ends the medical disability and starts the social disability?
Herewith one must have an eye for both the individual and the social perspective. At first we have to measure the influence of the social environment in the right perspective. But we also need to adjust this environment in a way which will tone down the discriminating attitude of the public.
Awareness is the first step to acceptation of people with a disability in my point of view inclusion is one of those steps. Inclusion is often used in the context of being “related to” instead of being part of society.
See also sport and Organizational integration
Disabled, handicapped, Special Needs, restricted or ????
In the past few years, many discussions have taken place in the Netherlands about correct use of language towards people with a disability. Especially parents associations worked hard for the description ‘people with a restriction’. This terminology has resulted in a less negative image as previous terms as ‘disabled’, ‘weak-minded’, ‘spastic’, ‘deaf and dumb’, ‘Mongol’ etc.
Besides the description ‘people with a restriction’ shows that it they are humans in the first place. ‘intellectual, ‘motorial’, ‘physical’, ’auditive’, ‘visual’ refers to cause of the restriction.
Another point is that changing the description in '"people with a restriction'" will leads to many confusions by people who normally don't have contact with this group. On this site we decide to use the term '"disabled'"
In the hope to contribute to the wish of full sportsmanship.
What’s in a name?
No matter how we name our judokas, it has everything to do with the conceptualization of others. It is just like weather, everyone talks about it, without having any influence on the issue. People do not deny the disabilities of the judoka, but they still contribute to confusion and incomprehension to others. Maybe trainers and other supporting people should be more proud of our Dutch G-judokas, they are actually very good in judo. For about fourty G-judokas have passed their 1ste Dan examination already, a few judokas have even passed their 2nd Dan examination. Hundreds of judokas join (inter) national competitions where they achieve extremely good results, and they have seen and experienced more than the average “mainstream” judoka.
Personally I believe that most “regular” judokas should use the high perseverance, the joy and the high extend of fair play of G-judokas as a model for themselves. G-judokas also contribute to the PR of judo, like Cees Roest, he came on national television on several channels, on the news and even the annual review since he was the first judoka with S.C.L who achie-ved his 1st Dan. TV documantaire exam 1e DAN
Motivation
Most people are not acquainted with people with a disability in their direct surroundings. Due to this unfamiliarity, still unusual ideas exist such as; judoka’s with a intellectual disability are always dependent and are not able to do things for themselves. As long as people think like this, it will be very difficult for people with a disability to sport as normal as possible.
We can change this by telling and showing others that people with a disability are able to have their own wishes, possibilities and interests, just like anyone else.
These people want to be taken seriously, and treated with respect and equality.
Every human being is unique,
but no one can escape specific characteristics with which we are born or taught. A judoka with a intellectual restriction needs to be treated differently as a judoka with a physical restriction who did grammar school. Therefore we think that several restrictions should be described and the way we should integrate (See treatment)
Demographics
The demography of disability is difficult. That is because disability is not just a status condition, entirely contained within the individual. Rather, it is an interaction between medical status (say, having low vision or being blind) and the environment.
Estimates worldwide
Estimates of worldwide and country-wide numbers of individuals with disabilities are problematic. The varying approaches used to defining disability is not standerd, demographers agree that the world population of individuals with disabilities is very large. The World Health Organization, for example, estimates that there are as many as 600 million persons with disabilities. The United Nations estimate is 650 million.
Read more about diabilities in context to Europe. here
Estimates disabled judoka's within the EJU:
Al 55 members of the EJU were send a standard form from the EJU Disability Committee about there contribution for the disabled. see EJU members
Only a few forms returned, still we were able to made an report which inludes the estimate of numbers and percentages of disabled judoka’s within the EJU.
Ask the EJU report here
