Celebrating Disability History & Awareness Month

What I learned: Paralympics & Special Olympics are not the same thing

Oct 02, 2024

October

The way we celebrate this month in my district is through a conglomeration of a few different observances:

Washington State RCW 28A.230.158 acknowledges Disability History Month in October requiring “educational activities that provide instruction, awareness, and understanding of disability history and people with disabilities.”
October is National Disability Employment Awareness Month. This observance began as “National Employ the Physically Handicapped Week” in 1945 and became “National Disability Employment Awareness Month” in 1988.
Disability Pride Month is in July (when we’re not in school).

My district uses the title “Disability History & Awareness Month” to combine both the state RCW and national observance.

I learned that the Paralympics and Special Olympics are not the same thing. I had inaccurately been using them interchangeably, but they are separate organizations.

Paralympics

Athletes who compete in the Paralympics must qualify under one (or more) of three groups: physical impairments, vision impairment, and intellectual impairment.1
They originated as the Stoke Mandeville Games, which included 16 injured service people who competed in archery during the 1948 Olympic games. The Stoke Mandeville Games became the Paralympic games. The first games were in Rome in 1960 with 400 athletes from 23 countries. The first Winter Paralympics Games took place in 1976 in Sweden.
Since 1988 (summer games) and 1992 (winter games), the Paralympic Games have taken place in the same cities and venues as the Olympics.2 Most recently, the Paralympic games were held August 28-September 8, 2024 in Paris.
Photo by Arisa Chattasa on Unsplash

Special Olympics

The Special Olympics were founded in 1968 by Eunice Kennedy Shriver, an advocate for the rights and acceptance of people with intellectual disabilities.3
The Special Olympics mission is to provide Olympic-type sports training and competition for people with intellectual disabilities while building skills and developing community.4
The Special Olympics has 46,000 sporting competitions a year across 177 countries.

If you would like to honor disability history and awareness, the following are some ideas:

Learn more about leaders and role models (past and current) who advocate for disability visibility and rights.
Learn more about accessibility options. Some starting points to consider:
- When hyperlinking something (in a document, email, slideshow, etc), links need to make sense out of context. Linking something with phrases like “click here” or “link” make it difficult for screen reader users to navigate the content. Instead, use the specific title as the hyperlink text.5
- Turn on closed captions when playing a video for a group of people . While closed captions are not always 100% accurate, they are often helpful. I also recently learned that you can turn on closed captions from a Google Slides presentation by pressing Ctrl + Shift + c while in present mode. I’ve used this a few times in my classroom (and ran into some technical difficulties). The kids have found it helpful when it’s worked!
- Watch this TedTalk: Living in an inaccessible world | Jessica Smith. Around minute 8, she shares some inventions that were created to restore the dignity and independence of people with disabilities that most of us use on a regular basis. I learned a lot!
Learn about the history and impact of the Americans with Disabilities Act, passed in 1990. One resource is this video: Americans with Disabilities Act (For Kids, By Kids).

Help us learn more: What disability leaders and role models do we need to learn more about? What are additional ways to celebrate and honor Disability History & Awareness Month (and perhaps what stereotypes and/or tropes do we need to make sure we challenge or avoid)?