Adaptive Rock Climbing for People With Disabilities

Series Summary

Indoor rock climbing has become quite popular in recent years as the rise of extreme sports continues to grow. Similar to regular rock climbing, indoor climbing requires strength, endurance, agility and balance in order to cope with the physical challenge that is presented. Indoor and outdoor rock climbing differ in the level of danger though, as the risk for injury or fatality is much lower for a climber on an indoor climbing wall. Climbing walls are often used to teach beginners how to rock climb, or for experienced rock climbers to sharpen their skills without having to drive to another location. In this free video series on indoor rock climbing for people with disabilities, Splore representative Suzy Shrare teaches anyone how a little equipment can give a person with disabilities the chance to climb an indoor rock wall. Shrare covers the goals and equipment of helping people with disabilities climb rock walls and shares how the climbing process works. She covers the harnesses, the belay communication and how to set up a pulley system for top rope climbing. Shrare leads viewers through using special seats to aid a climber with disabilities ascent and descent of the wall. She finishes with encouragement and important tips.

Video Transcript

"Good morning and welcome to How to Learn to Do Accessible Rock Climbing for People With Disabilities. The first thing you have to keep in mind when working with people with disabilities and taking them rock climbing is you want to be open and we have a quote that we use around the office where I work at, a place called Splores, it's a non-profit that does outdoor recreation for people with disabilities. And the quote is, "Be open, because some communicators are deaf. Because some visionaries are blind. Because some movers and shakers are paralyzed. Because the only true disability is a mind stuck in the closed position. " And the Be Open quote is what we're going to demonstrate today. When working with people with disabilities, the first thing you want to keep in mind is to use what we call people first language. People first language is when you always put the person before their disability. For example, a kid with autism is a kid with autism, he doesn't, he's not an autistic kid. You always want to put his name first, say his name's Johnny, you always want to say Johnny and Johnny has autism or Johnny is in a wheelchair. People first language is very important in today's world. It shows respect and people with disabilities have names, you want to use their names. Some facts about people with disabilities in America is right now there's about 59 million Americans with disabilities, whether those disabilities are physical, cognitive, emotional or behavioral, 59 million people. If you look at the American population right now, the American population is at 300 million so if you break those numbers down, it's about 1 out of every 6 people have a disability and so again goes back to the point of using people first language."