[Blind-international-students] Sport for the blind, quite important but, how accessible it is?

[Mostafa Al'mahdy]

Hello. As all we know, sport is an active diversion that demands physical exertion, it involves strenuous physical efforts to win a competition. It's a major activity that everyone of us should be involved in on a regular basis. Emphatically, blind people are not any different from anyone else. Thus, sports and athletic activities are essentially mandatory for blind people in particular, due to the fact that we are less active in everyday life in comparison to sighted counterparts. We don't drive for instance, and we don't spend all of our errands quite independently. We ordinarily   accompany a sighted friend, or family member to assist us, or perhaps it's being done on our behalf. Well recently, a popular blind musician from Egypt passed away due to severe health problems, and heart diseases. As blind people, we spend a long time, just lounging, either on the computer, on the piano, or whatever that interests you individually. Furthermore, as blind people, we love to eat and to taste delicious food, haha. I was a bit overweight, and I felt that my health could be subjected to major threats if I continued this way. So I decided to register in a Gymnasium to avoid any of that. Well since I started to go to the Gym on a daily basis, I happilly became quite active, less lazy, and mentally positive. At the Gym, and in a quite short period of time, I made many friends, it's infact a great place to exercise, interact and socialize. Now the question is, how accessible the Gym is? How accessible these Athletic facilities are? Well usually, the Gym is largely equipped with various athletic devices and facilities. But for the most part, you can't use them independently. You will frequently demand the sighted assistance of your coach or one of your friends at the Gym to slightly adjust the device you exercise on, either to decrease or increase the speed or the resistance of some device. That absolutely requires sighted interference. So for instance, when I use the treadmill, the coach configures it for me, and he tells me, it's now programmed for you to run 15 minutes straight, or whatever the time was. During my treadmill session, I can't observe or do the following:
1; The speed that this treadmill was set to run on, unless someone tells me about it.
2; How many mile it runs per minute.
3; How many fats and calories I lose per minute.
4; How fast my heartbeats are?
5; How long is left to go on that particular program I am running on.
6; I can't adjust the treadmill timer on my own.
Of course, all of these important information and even more are displayed on the treadmill front screen. These information are visually recognized, and any sighted trainee can easily adjust and control that as he exercises. I think this subject is quite important to be significantly considered on a panel of critical discussions. It's timely for our adaptive technology to incredibly reflect its usability, and to enormously reutilize this athletic world for us. I look forward to your positive participations, thank you, have a pleasant time. Mostafa.     
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