When I was a kid, I was always glued to the television during the two weeks of the Olympic Games. It didn’t matter if it was the summer games, or the winter— I loved it all. I’d keep track of the events in a notebook where I sketched a metal tally chart that was color-coded with tiny country flags that I drew in crayon. I was obsessed.
But, as a kid with a disability, I didn’t see any people like me competing in the Olympics. So, as much as I loved everything about the event, I knew that someone like me would never have an Olympic medal around their neck. This didn’t make me sad, necessarily, but it did make me do something that disabled people are forced to do all the time— I adapted and altered an existing (non-accessible) concept to make it more accessible to me.
This is something disabled people must do every single day. When you live in a world not designed for you, you must adapt the world to suit your own needs. So, when I created my own Olympics with sports that I could compete in… and I made my own Olympic medals out of construction paper and string, I was honing the skills of adaptation and resourcefulness that I would need later in life.
Plus, I really, really liked making things out of construction paper.
Unfortunately, eleven-year-old me had never heard of the Paralympics and didn’t know that there was already a sporting event designed for disabled people. With all the media attention and coverage focused on the Olympics, the Paralympics were like the out-of-town cousins that didn’t get invited to the real party. It’s sad that this was the case. I think it would have meant a great deal to me as a young child to see disabled people participating in sports on television. But it wasn’t until a few years later that I first saw footage of the Paralympic Games in Sydney, Australia. Even then, it was just a brief news story— network channels didn’t deem it important enough to warrant actual live coverage.
In recent years, media coverage of the Paralympics has increased, and financial support for Paralympians have increased, too. But there is still a long way to go to elevate the event to the level that it deserves. While Paralympians are often featured in inspiring corporate television ads that are aired during the Olympics, the actual sporting events of these Paralympians don’t receive the same attention.
But it doesn’t have to be this way.
The more viewers that tune into Paralympic coverage, the more coverage the television networks will offer. Further, the more external pressure applied to networks to provide equitable coverage, the more likely they will be to do it. So, I call upon you to tune into the Tokyo Paralympic Games this week. Talk about it on social media. Get the buzz started.
Together, we can get those ratings up!
(Eleven-year-old me will thank you for it.)
Article: How to watch and stream the Tokyo Paralympic Games on NBC: https://www.nbcolympics.com/news/how-watch-and-stream-tokyo-paralympic-games-nbc