Doing disability differently

In Canada, wheelchair basketball brings people together regardless of their abilities. Lesley Evans Ogden asks whether this kind of integration could help dispel stigma, discrimination and misconceptions about disability more widely.

I m sitting in a gymnasium at Mount Royal University in Calgary watching the clock count down in the dying moments of a basketball game. The play is fast-paced and aggressive, as you might expect of a Canadian national championship match. On the Saskatchewan sidelines, they chant “S-A, S-A-S, S-A-S-K, let’s go!”, trying to lift their team, until the blare of the buzzer brings an end to the game and their hopes of a comeback. The white-shirted Edmonton Inferno, flame-orange numbers emblazoned on their backs, have beaten the green-shirted Saskatchewan team 56:38. The teams line up and shake hands, and the players mingle beside their coaches.

Then, several of the players from Edmonton’s winning team unstrap from their wheelchairs and stand up. They place their bags on the seats and nonchalantly walk, pushing the chairs in front of them, out of the gym.

In Canada at least, wheelchair basketball is a chance for disabled and able-bodied athletes to compete with and against each other. I knew in advance that some of the players I was watching do not use wheelchairs off the court, and that these chairs are sporting kit like hockey sticks or bicycles. Yet seeing those players stand up still profoundly challenged my preconceptions. I am so accustomed to thinking of wheelchair use in binary terms: you either use one or you don’t. Now I’m struggling to unlearn that notion.

Reference:

• Interrogating disability: The (de)composition of a recovering Paralympian, by Danielle Peers.
• Peers and Spencer-Cavaliere’s research with Canadian wheelchair basketball players was published in 2011.
• The studies on reverse integration with children by Adam Evans and colleagues in the UK and Kimberly D Schoger in the US.