Tips for sporting organisations

Audio described transcript:

Andrew Pope:

Audio description: A man with short brown hair, a black button up shirt and black and purple checked tie. He is standing in a foyer with trees in the background.

Transcript: Sport is important to accessibility and accessibility is important to sport. But in my own lived experience, as a person with disability, having accessible sporting opportunities can open up so many avenues for self-confidence, leadership, it can take you places where you never thought you would go. And the confidence and the friendships that you build, especially that I built, were so vital for my development as a person and development as a professional and I wouldn’t have had some of the opportunities that I now have had if I hadn’t been involved in sport.

Slide that reads: What can sporting organisations do?

Transcript: I think they need to develop the opportunities and the knowledge of how to communicate with people with disabilities and just ask because if you don’t ask, you don’t know what the question is, and what the answer is.

We always think we know and we always think that those sporting organisations think ‘oh we need to do this, this and this’ to include people. But actually, they just need to ask and start developing their conversation with people with disabilities. So within those conversations, the solutions may actually come and these might be innovative because they’re designed with the person, not for the person.