South Florida was the setting for an international festival of sports for people with disabilities in June.

By Andy Kennedy, Access Anything

The second US-located No Barriers Festival was a huge success June 4-7 in Miami, Florida, with over 200 participants, a dozen different sports for participants to test, a dozen company booths in “Innovation Village,” and two mornings full of technology and science updates at the Technology Symposium.

The first No Barriers fest occurred in 2005 in Italy; that was followed in 2007 by one in Lake Tahoe/Targhee, California that nearly doubled in size. No Barriers was initiated by Eric Weihenmayer, [...]

SPORTS ROUNDUP |

Photographs by Alice Faye Love

Each year, Lakeshore Foundation in Birmingham, Alabama, hosts the Pioneer Classic Wheelchair Basketball Invitational in which 10 Division II teams and four women’s teams compete. This year’s Classic, which took place January 9 through 11, saw the Arkansas Rollin’ Razorbacks defeating the Orlando Magic 63-58 to take first place in the Division II column.

On the women’s side, University of Alabama’s women were unbeatable from beginning to end, besting Dallas’s Lady Mavericks, the Shepherd Lady Steelers and Team Quebec in every game. Alabama dominated the Lady Mavs to take the women’s title with a 55-40 win [...]

The BBC on the close of the 2008 Paralympic Games in Beijing:

The Mayor of London has received the Paralympic flag as Beijing extinguished its flame in the Bird’s Nest stadium.

International Paralympic Committee chief Philip Craven hailed Beijing 2008 as “the greatest Games ever” during a moving, colourful closing ceremony.

London 2012′s double decker bus made a second appearance alongside wheelchair basketball star Ade Adepitan.

British organisers offered “youth and zest” for London’s second handover, featuring a new generation of talent.

Once again, the Beijing organisers produced a ceremony packed with light, sound and choreography, lapped up by a capacity Bird’s Nest audience.

Thousands of leaves and [...]

It’s a rivalry made famous by the film Murderball: The Americans vs. the Canadians.

The US had less success against Canada on the basketball court, but, according to the NY Times’ Rings blog, American quad rugby players tasted sweet revenge for their defeat in Athens in 2004 against their counterparts from the north. Unfortunately, it ain’t over yet: as blogger Jeff Klein notes, “a medal-round rematch seems inevitable.”

WHEELCHAIR RUGBY: In a meeting of the sport’s two greatest rivals, the U.S. team beat Canada, 37-32, to gain some measure of revenge for their loss in the 2004 Paralympic semifinal.

The Americans’ victory before a [...]

The Games have begun. Here is the BBC’s report on the 2008 Paralympics opening ceremonies in Beijing:

Dazzling show opens Paralympics

The 2008 Paralympic Games has been officially opened by Chinese President Hu Jintao during a stunning ceremony at the Bird’s Nest stadium in Beijing.

In the three-hour spectacular show, 6,000 performers and 4,000 disabled athletes from 148 countries took part in front of 91,000 ecstatic spectators.

Britain has a 206-strong team and was led into the arena by flag-bearer Danny Crates, 800m champion in Athens.

The action across 20 sports begins on Sunday and lasts until 17 September.

The opening spectacular featured a number of disabled actors [...]

Action online calls your attention to an article on the Paralympics in The New York Times (registration required):

September 6, 2008
Paralympic Athletes Add Equality to Their Goals
By ALAN SCHWARZ

AURORA, Ill. – When he rolls to the starting line for the 1,500-meter wheelchair race at the Paralympics, the Olympics for disabled athletes that begin Saturday in Beijing, Tony Iniguez will wear his Team USA uniform with pride. He will compete for the United States’s Olympic program. He is also suing it for discrimination.

Iniguez is one of many Paralympians who criticize the United States Olympic Committee for providing less direct financial assistance [...]

Here’s another article from the international media on the 2008 Paralympics, this one from the BBC:

The challenges facing China’s disabled

With the Paralympic Games about to get under way, the BBC’s Michael Bristow looks at how life has changed in recent years for Chinese people with disabilities.

Wheelchair user Jin Yi’s journey across Beijing by bus and subway shows just how seriously China is tackling disability issues.

Mr Jin, an Olympic volunteer, is able to travel on public transport with the help of ramps and lifts.

But he concedes that despite the improvements in accessibility, ordinary people’s attitudes still need to change.

As in many [...]

While the US media are relatively silent about the Paralympics, other nations’ media are paying closer attention. Action online will try to bring your attention to this coverage as we find it.

Here is an article from The Independent of the UK:

Prejudice & the Paralympics

The Games are another chance for China to show the world what it can do. Yet this is a country where disabled people are shunned. By Clifford Coonan

Wheelchair-friendly London cabs with distinctive Beijing taxi livery are waiting outside the Bird’s Nest stadium, buses fitted with ramps cruise the city and all over the capital there are banners [...]

A little over a year after Laura Schwanger first got into a scull to row for a place on the US national team, she earned a prime spot on the US Paralympic rowing team during the US National Rowing Championships, Sunday, June 29, 2008, at Lake Mercer County Park outside of Princeton, New Jersey.

This year marks the sport’s Paralympian debut in Beijing this month. It won’t be the first time the 49-year-old resident of Elkins Park, Pennsylvania, has been to the Games, however.

Schwanger is a three-time Paralympic track and field athlete, winner of multiple golds, silver and bronze medals at [...]