Equity of Access to Fitness
Sport England’s Active Lives Adult Survey data shows disabled people are almost twice as likely to be physically inactive (43%), compared with those without a disability (23%).
1 in 2 blind and partially sighted people feel that having sight loss stops them from exercising as much as they want to and 1 in 3 blind and partially sighted people said there were sports or fitness activities they would like to try but haven’t been able to.
We know that blind and partially sighted people can experience a range of barriers when seeking to use their local leisure centre, gym or other sports facilities.
We believe we, as blind and partially sighted people, should have the same access to leisure and fitness as everyone else, so here are some ways that leisure centre operators or gym owners can make a difference.
We are passionate about making this change and work in the following ways to achieve our mission:
- Providing advice and guidance to ensure the sport, physical activity and leisure workforce have access to vision awareness training.
- Creating impactful guidance that sport, physical activity and leisure providers can use to improve the journey to activity for active lives and communicate effectively and inclusively with their blind and partially sighted customers.
- Support for sport, physical activity and leisure providers to ensure that they create accessible websites for blind and partially sighted customers.
- Influence sport, physical activity and leisure providers by providing guidance on creating an accessible environment for activity.
- Highlighting the importance of making accessible equipment available to blind and partially sighted people who are taking part in sport, physical activity or leisure activities.
- Providing guidance for professionals to support those people working in the sight loss sector.
- Showcasing case studies of people with lived experience benefitting from being active.