how to mitigate the cost of access to sport for people with disabilities

In exactly 500 days, the high mass of parasport has an appointment in Paris for the first summer edition of the Paralympic Games in France. If the moment of sporting entertainment is, in itself, the heart of this international event, behind the scenes, we are already working to draw a tangible legacy, to think about the future. The challenge: to encourage the practice of sport in a sustainable way, including for people with disabilities.

The national barometer of sports practices from the National Institute for Youth and Popular Education (Injep), dating from 2018, is often taken as an example to underline that 48% of people with disabilities do not practice any activity. physical and athletic, compared to 34% of the general population.

Between self-censorship, the problem of access to a local club, pathologies or complex types of disability requiring significant adaptations, there are a myriad of reasons to understand these figures. Among them, the financial brake which constitutes the practice of a physical and sporting activity.

13,000 euros for a competition chair

After a scooter accident in 2009, which resulted in the amputation of one of his legs, David Séjor decided a year and a half ago to get into para-athletics. The 53-year-old man, a former professional dancer – hip-hop specialty – trains at Vallée de la Marne Athlétisme 77, a club located in Torcy (Seine-et-Marne). With his four training sessions per week and the support of his two coaches, one for bodybuilding, the other for the track, he is progressing quickly and participating in the French indoor championships in February 2022 (category T54) over 100 meters.

“Currently, I have a chair lent to me by the Regional Council of Île-de-France, but it’s true that to aim higher, I would need one that is more efficient and adapted to my morphology. “, he explains. Since last year, David has come close to the times achieved by athletes in the French team, which only outstrip him by a few seconds. But to maintain his dream of participating in the Paralympic Games in Paris, a move upmarket is necessary. Problem: the exorbitant cost of this advanced equipment. “I had already taken the measurements and produced the estimate, and it takes around 13,000 euros for this new, lighter chair with carbon wheels”he says. “It’s the price of a good car. I spoke with a person who plays tennis, his chair is 15,000 euros. Even the chair that I was lent, it costs 6,000 euros. “

To overcome this obstacle, his daughter Beverly launched an online kitty to help her father achieve his dream. La Poste de Brie-Comte-Robert, where David works, and associations have also given him their support, while possibly waiting for other partners.

“This in-between is what is most complicated to manage, that is to say those people who are in access to high performance but who do not yet have the aura which allows them to be there and to have sponsors”explains Guy Tisserant, assistant treasurer at the French Handisport Federation (FFH) and four-time Paralympic wheelchair table tennis champion. “They do not yet have state aid because they are not yet top athletes.”

Disability compensation, a fundamental concept in access to sport

The former table tennis player has seen disabled sports evolve a lot in recent years, in the right direction, but there are still things to take into account, especially concerning the notion of compensation. Registered in the law of February 11, 2005, it provides that it is not only up to the person with a disability to adapt to the environment, but also to the environment to meet specific needs. A founding idea that contributes to changing the way we look at disability in society.

For the FFH, as for the French Federation of adapted sport (FFSA) and other structures offering sports activities for people with disabilities, the objective will be to “to allow each person, whatever their situation, to practice in satisfactory and as accessible conditions as possible”, says Guy Tisserant. To have the means of its ambition everywhere on the territory, the FFH works with the State, the communities but also private partners like EDF – which provides financial and then logistical support, and carries out awareness-raising actions with the general public. It is then up to the affiliated clubs to offer suitable support so that the remainder to be paid for is as low as possible for the approximately 35,000 license holders – which varies from around thirty euros in leisure to around sixty in competition, whatever the nature of the disability.

Individualize life paths to better compensate for the additional cost linked to sports practice

Still, between two people with the same disability, access to sports equipment may vary. It depends on the context of the arrival of this disability: for example, if it is acquired during life (accident or other) and the fault is given to a third party, insurance will be able to be mobilized, to cover and condition the arrival of financial capital, which can be – as desired – used to practice a physical and sporting activity. When this disability is innate, financial and human support will be provided more by social security systems, and therefore by public funding, often leaving the affected person with a remainder to pay.

Victim of a scooter accident when she was only 18, which led to the amputation of her left leg, three-time Paralympic champion Marie-Amélie Le Fur, also president of the French Paralympic and Sports Committee (CPSF ), confirms that the context in which the disability occurs is important. The fact remains that for her, whatever her nature, there must be a social and societal evolution to compensate for this handicap. “At the beginning of April, we put forward a recommendation to the Economic, Social and Environmental Council (Cese) on the life project of the person with a disability with regard to access to sport. The challenge is to better determine – by questioning him, by listening to his desires, his relationship to sport – financial compensation for the additional cost that will be inherent in the practice of sport.”

“We are faced with people who are more in the majority than the general population in a precarious financial situation.”

Marie-Amélie Le Fur, President of the CPSF

at Franceinfo: sports

“When you only receive the allowance for disabled adults (AAH) monthly, you do not have the financial capacity of someone who will work and be in a higher socio-professional category. These are factors that are accumulate and which mean that people with disabilities, whether motor, intellectual or psychological, do not have the financial means to access sport.

Tools have been created around accessibility to parasport, with in particular an envelope of two million euros made available by the National Sports Agency (ANS). In some territories, departmental houses for the disabled (MDPH) integrate the fact that sport is part of life projects and take charge of certain sports equipment. Private partners will also get involved. But it is also on the associative side that the solutions manage to emerge.

Alexandra Nouchet is part of the new generation of tricolor athletes within the French para-athletics team. While waiting for the Worlds this summer at the Charléty stadium (July 8 to 17), the sprint and long jump specialist (T63 category) is fine-tuning her training with her carbon blade. Born with a malformation of the right leg, the young woman of 25 years knows that she owes a lot to the association “Entr’aide” and its project “A blade to run”.

“When I started out in athletics, I thought that a sports prosthesis like I had, with a slightly dynamic foot, could be enough.she recalls. I was far off the mark and quickly my coach told me that I had to practice with suitable equipment, that is to say a blade. However, I was starting from nothing and it was very expensive [entre 7 et 10 000 euros pour une prothèse tibiale, sans mécanisme de genou] and not easy to get. The association – which offers free racing blades to young people with disabilities so that they can discover the sport from the age of six – agreed to make an exception for me by letting me have one.

The associative fabric is therefore capable of taking over to make up for a deficit in public commitment. A corrective model nevertheless seems to be in place: in March 2022, the government decided to reduce the VAT rate to 5.5% (instead of 20%) for disabled sports equipment. A step forward concedes Marie-Amélie Le Fur, even if this VAT does not apply “only on the material and not on the human cost, on all the work of the prosthetist who will do the engineering work to create the custom-made socket, to adjust it… These are all the costs that are necessary manage to smooth out to ensure that the remainder to be paid is as low as possible.”

Make sports equipment accessible to facilitate its industrialization

On the manufacturers’ side, this reduction in the VAT rate has not really boosted demand. “It’s not a negligible reduction, you shouldn’t see the glass half empty, but if we are talking, for example, of a prosthesis for running or skiing that can go from 5,000 to 10,000 euros, that doesn’t make it any more accessible.”tempers Charles Henry, marketing manager at Ottobock France.

The German company has been a sponsor of the Paralympic Games since 1988, but also provides technical support for the athletes’ prostheses or chairs during the competition. Today, it is the only one to offer a fully supported sports foot prosthesis in France. As for the racing blade, whose specifications are different, we will have to wait a little longer… “We would like to do it faster but we are hampered by the ability to sell our devices. Because the less the prices are accessible, the less we sell, the less we make our costs profitable.”

Nevertheless, Charles Henry feels that things are moving forward, working with medico-social establishments – often the first link in the chain – but also doctors who are the voice of access to sport for people with disabilities. “If we redo this discussion in 10 years, we will have a much better situation in terms of visibility, does he advance. The time to change the mentalities and the gaze of society.”