Thirteenth Paralympic Games Begin

Saturday, September 06, 2008

Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM

The 13th Summer Paralympic Games begin on September 6, 2008 in Beijing, China. Since 1988, the Paralympic Games are held in the same year and location as the Olympic Games. The Paralympic torch was lit on August 28 at the Temple of Heaven in Beijing, and was relayed by Paralympian athletes for nine days until arriving in Beijing to mark the beginning of the games.

Categories of athletes:

Wheelchair: Spinal cord and other injuries or disabilities requiring use of a wheelchair.
Amputee: Partial or total loss of at least one limb.
Brain Injury: Cerebral palsy, traumatic brain injury, stroke, and conditions affecting balance and muscle control.
Visual: Partial to total blindness.
Les Autres (The Others): Athletes with other physical disabilities such as multiple sclerosis or congenital deformities of the limbs, dwarfism, and others.
The category for Intellectual Disability is currently suspended following events entered by deception at the Sydney games in 2000, and is being re-evaluated by the International Paralympic Committee (IPC).

Here are the events and their symbols:

A request by Healthline has come in to not use labels. They state,

"In part of our ongoing testing, we’ve discovered that the addition of labels at the end of blogs is actually having a negative impact on the blogs' performance on search engines."

Programmers, do you have suggestions?

Logos by International Paralympic Committee

Labels: disability/ability, Olympics