Paralympic Sports - Disability Categories

Disability Categories

Athletes who participate in Paralympic sport are grouped into six major categories, based on their type of disability:

• Amputee: Persons with a partial or total amputation of at least one limb.

• Cerebral palsy: Persons who have a non-progressive neurological disorder resulting from cerebral palsy, traumatic brain injury, or stroke, or similar disabilities affecting muscle control, balance or coordination.

• Intellectual disability: Persons who have a significant impairment in intellectual functioning with associated limitations in adaptive behaviour.

• Les autres: From the French for the others, this includes persons with a mobility impairment or other loss of physical function that does not fall strictly into one of the other five categories. Participants include those with dwarfism, multiple sclerosis or other disabilities.

• Visually impaired: Persons who have a non-correctable vision impairment ranging from partially sighted to total blindness.

• Wheelchair: Persons with a disability that requires them to compete using a wheelchair. This includes most athletes with spinal cord injuries as well as other athletes who require wheelchairs, including some lower limb amputees, persons with polio, and other disabilities.

The disability category determines who athletes compete against and which sports they participate in. Some sports are open to multiple disability categories (e.g. cycling), while others are restricted to only one (e.g. Five-a-side football). In some sports athletes from multiple categories compete, but only within their category (e.g. athletics), while in others athletes from different categories compete against one another (e.g. swimming). Events in the Paralympics are commonly labelled with the relevant disability category, such as Men's Swimming Freestyle S1, indicating athletes with a severe physical impairment, or Ladies Table Tennis 11, indicating athletes with an intellectual disability.