Nothing about us, without us: making sport accessible
Within the framework of the 2024 European Week of Sport, ENGSO EWS Committee organised an online seminar, entitled “Transforming Sports through Accessibility”, to present the organisation’s newly published guidelines for inclusive events and discuss accessibility of sport for people with disability, LGBTQI+ community and women.
The online seminar was moderated by the ENGSO EWS Chair Tarja Krum.
Sarah Townsend, EWS member, introduced the new ENGSO guidelines “HOSTING INCLUSIVE EVENTS – Accessibility Guidelines for ENGSO events” which were developed by EWS in consultation with ENGSO members, and Rejhan Halili, EWS member, presented their implementation at the upcoming ENGSO European Sport Platform in Prishtina, Kosovo in November 2024.
Three inspirational speakers gave focus to the intersectional approach taken in developing these guidelines with the guiding principle of ‘nothing about us without us’ with presentations on what accessibility looks like for different profiles, and what makes events and spaces welcoming for everyone.
Georgios Kapellakis, Paralympian and President of the Hellenic Paralympic Committee, talked about his recent experiences at the Paralympics Paris 2024, highlighting the importance of inclusion, such as the Olympic and Paralympic logos being presented on the same platform, and the uniqueness of how taking the hosting of events out of suburban stadiums and placing them in central locations in the centre of Paris offered events that were very much “sports for the people”, and the challenges that city centre events present to disabled athletes and spectators.
Conny-Hendrik Schälicke, Board Member of Seitenwechsel Sportverein für FrauenLesbenTrans*Inter und Mädchen e.V., offered a wonderful presentation that both gave a glimpse of the history of the LGBTQI+ inclusion in sport through a German lens and what measures their club has taken to evolve into a successful that puts inclusion at its core, and the challenges that Seitenwechsel faced, and those that it and other LGBTQI+ clubs still have to overcome in the path to inclusion.
Andreja McQuarrie, member of the Commission for Gender Equality at Slovenian National Olympic Committee, vice president of the Commission for Women’s Football at the Slovenian National Football Association, Olympian in alpine skiing (Sarajevo 1984) expertly highlighted the barriers to women in leadership positions in sport, using concrete examples and statistics from the Slovenian sports world and her personal experiences in football.
We would like to thank the guest speakers and all participants who followed the seminar.
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