Hi Ryan, I don't know that we need a new sport, but we need to involve more sighted players in the sports we do have. What I mean by that is beeper baseball is very much like regular baseball accept we have beepers for the baseball and bases. There is no reason we couldn't have sighted players playing beeper baseball with us as I think we would be even as far as accessibility goes.
Same might be said for socker. I've actually played beeper socker with sighted people before and its not really any different for them. The only effective difference is that the ball rolls around beeping like crazywhere a regular ball doesn't. Again, I think both blind and sighted players would be pretty much even as far as accessibility goes. The real problem is not that there aren't sports blind and sighted people can play together, but nobody tends to bring the two groups together. If a parent takes a blind child to a little league baseball game the coach is likely to suggest that the parents of the child take him/her to a beeper ball league instead. Which is quite sad, because as long as the parents provide the little league team with a beeper baseball there isn't any reason their child can't play with the sighted kids. However, attitudes being what they are parents of blind children tend to form their own leagues for beeper baseball while parents of sighted children run little leagues for sighted kids without much interaction between the two. There are other sports such as bowling that don't require sight either. As long as someone lines the blind player up correctly and he/she has a decent aim they can bowl with the rest of the sighted people and be competitive. I've personally found I don't need the guide rails and all the other stuff that is suppose to make bowling more accessible for the blind. I just line up and bowl the best I can. Which means if a blind player wants to he or she could compete against sighted players more or less equally. Cheers! On 6/7/12, Ryan Strunk <[email protected]> wrote: > After reading the article and seeing your feedback, I can't help but nod my > head in agreement. It got me to thinking about a perennial problem with > so-called "blind sports," and I wonder what the solution is. > If this strays too far from the realm of accessible gaming, please feel > free > to steer the topic back in a more suitable direction. > In all blind sports I have seen--goal ball, beep baseball, accessible > cricket, power showdown, and now this--the common trend seems to be that > blind players are forced to play only with other blind players. In some of > these sports totally blind people even get a different set of rules than > those with partial sight. Nuts to that, and I have some residual vision. > The article talks about how tennis teaches blind people that they can do > the > same things as their sighted peers, but I'm having trouble seeing how > modified tennis makes that case. Certainly I believe that blindness can be > relegated to the level of an inconvenience, and I believe that given the > proper training and opportunity, blind people can compete on an equal > playing field with the sighted--no pun intended--but I don't know if that's > often the case when it comes to sports. > I know that certain forms of martial arts lend themselves to equal > competition between blind and sighted people; one of my co-workers this > Summer takes part in UFC fights. I myself wrestled for 8 years while going > to school. But when it comes to other sports, especially team sports, I > wonder how we could go about participating on an equal level. Is the answer > to create a new sport that blind and sighted people can play together? Do > we > develop a new set of techniques so that we, too, can play pickup > basketball? > I don't know, but I'd sure like to find out. My days of training to be a > star athlete are certainly behind me, but it's not too late for the younger > guys. > All the best, > Ryan --- Gamers mailing list __ [email protected] If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to [email protected]. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://mail.audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to [email protected].
