[Sportsandrec] Sports Modification Over-Kill

Mon Jul 9 01:01:59 UTC 2012

I myself have experienced some of this. When I was in grade school, I was not expected to play sports in gym like everyone else. I got to stand closer to the net in volleyball (which doesn't really help since I don't have any usable vision). Let's not use overkill on accommodations to make us look incapable and inferior to our sighted peers, especially since we are fighting to get rid of this in so many other places such as getting rid of subminimum wages in the workplace because the sighted and "normal" people think we are not capable of working and succeeding at what we want to do. 

Aleeha 

On Jul 8, 2012, at 4:23 PM, "Peter Donahue" <pdonahue2 at satx.rr.com> wrote:

> Hello everyone,
> 
>    Agreed. We see too much of this in so-called "Sports for the blind." 
> When I attended the Oak Hill and Perkins Schools for the blind we played 
> baseball the way it should be played. Runners traversed the entire diamond, 
> we had three outfielders, etc. The only difference was the size of the ball. 
> Since it needed to be "Bounced" to the batter large utility balls were used 
> something that would no longer be necessary with the advent of beeping 
> baseballs. Bring on the beeping baseballs and bases but for God sakes play 
> the game as it was meant to be played. These modification over-kills only 
> serve to enforce the notion that the blind aren't capable of competing on 
> terms of equality as they expect less of blind players then sighted 
> athletes.
> 
> Peter Donahue
> 
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Ashley Bramlett" <bookwormahb at earthlink.net>
> To: "Sports and Recreation for the Blind Discussion List" 
> <sportsandrec at nfbnet.org>
> Sent: Sunday, July 08, 2012 2:24 PM
> Subject: Re: [Sportsandrec] FW: [nfbsc] A twist on tennis 
> allowstheblindtoplay
> 
> 
> well, let us know how it goes. good game, but does not sound like tennis
> with the modifications it makes.
> 
> -----Original Message----- 
> From: TNABA
> Sent: Sunday, July 08, 2012 2:15 AM
> To: Sports and Recreation for the Blind Discussion List
> Subject: Re: [Sportsandrec] FW: [nfbsc] A twist on tennis allows
> theblindtoplay
> 
> The Tennessee Association of Blind Athletes is working on bring this program
> to Tennessee. I think it is great.
> 
> Ricky Jones
> 
> Tennessee Association of Blind Athletes
> 1081 Zophi Street, Nashville TN 37216
> Email:      tnaba at bellsouth.net
> Phone:     615-390-4178
> Web:        www.tnaba.org
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Ashley Bramlett" <bookwormahb at earthlink.net>
> To: "Sports and Recreation for the Blind Discussion List"
> <sportsandrec at nfbnet.org>
> Sent: Saturday, July 07, 2012 10:40 PM
> Subject: Re: [Sportsandrec] FW: [nfbsc] A twist on tennis allows the
> blindtoplay
> 
> 
>> with so many changes, it really doesn't sound like tennis
>> 
>> -----Original Message----- 
>> From: Eric Calhoun
>> Sent: Saturday, July 07, 2012 8:41 PM
>> To: sportsandrec at nfbnet.org
>> Subject: [Sportsandrec] FW: [nfbsc] A twist on tennis allows the blind
>> toplay
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Original Message:
>> From: Vicki Phillips <xpirate412 at gmail.com>
>> To: <nfbsc at yahoogroups.com>
>> Subject: [nfbsc] A twist on tennis allows the blind to play
>> Date:
>> Sat, 7 Jul 2012 20:06:37 -0400
>> 
>> A twist on tennis allows the blind to play
>> By Laura Shin | June 11, 2012, 4:14 AM PDT
>> 
>> Tennis for the blind seems like a fantastical notion. After all, when
>> Sighted people have a hard enough time making contact with a little ball
>> that's whizzing through the air, how could a blind person be expected to
>> do
>> so without the benefit of sight?
>> But a new kind of tennis ball filled with ball bearings that rattle every
>> time it hits the ground or a racket is making it possible for the blind to
>> play.
>> The origins of blind tennis
>> Blind tennis originated in Japan in 1984 with a blind high school student
>> named Miyoshi Takei.
>> According to The New York Times, His widow, Etsuko, who is also blind,
>> said
>> he saw the court in his mind and he knew where he was standing, where the
>> ball was flying and bouncing. By listening, she said, he could control the
>> ball very well. (Takei died last year at 42 when he fell in front of a
>> train.) Japan now has about 300 players who compete in tournaments, and
>> the
>> sport is also played in China, South Korea, Taiwan, Britain and Russia.
>> American high school student Sejal Vallabh, who is sighted, learned of the
>> game while on an internship in Japan. The 17-year-old native of Newton,
>> Mass., founded a volunteer organization called Tennis Serves that is
>> starting to introduce blind tennis to the U.S., where about 1.8 million
>> Americans over 15 have severe difficulty seeing, according to the Census
>> Bureau.
>> Tennis Serves has brought the game to the Perkins School for the Blind in
>> Watertown, Mass., Lighthouse International in New York and the California
>> School for the Blind in Fremont. Vallabh hopes to someday hold a national
>> tournament and to have blind tennisrecognized as an official sport at the
>> Paralympics. She is also working with an engineering class at  Harvey Mudd
>> College to design a ball that emits a continuous sound, so players can
>> hear
>> the ball as it travels through the air, even before it bounces.
>> How blind tennis differs from sighted tennis
>> The ball is larger than a regular tennis ball and made of foam that
>> encases
>> a plastic shell holding the ball bearings. (You can hear the sound it
>> makes
>> in the video below.)
>> The game is also played on a smaller court with a badminton net lowered
>> to
>> the ground, with junior rackets with oversize heads and string taped
>> along
>> the lines. Players with some sight get two bounces, the completely blind
>> get
>> three, the Times says.
>> How the mind adapts to play blind tennis
>> One of the key adaptations of blind people is their ability to localize
>> sound.
>> In the blind, the human brain seems to use the area usually devoted to
>> vision, the occipital cortex, to instead process sound and touch in order
>> to
>> help them see what is around them.
>> For instance, studies show that when blind subjects read Braille, their
>> visual cortex activates, and that, in sighted people who are blindfolded,
>> the visual cortex begins to process sound and touch within five days.
>> So, when it comes to blind tennis, the players ability to localize sound
>> is
>> key to their ability to find and make contact with the ball. The Times
>> quotes William R. Wiener, an expert on orientation and mobility for the
>> blind, who is dean of graduate studies at the University of North
>> Carolina,
>> Greensboro, on the importance of sound localization to the blind:
>> Listening
>> To the ball, locating where it is and swinging at it probably helps you
>> with
>> the sport and also with your mobility.
>> Still, it takes a few years for totally blind players to be able to play
>> a
>> match of blind tennis, according to Ayako Matsui, former secretary
>> general
>> of the Japan Blind Tennis Federation.
>> But sound localization isnt the only sound processing skill that enables
>> blind players to see. Some of the blind use echolocation to navigate the
>> world  in other words, they use palatal clicks or hand claps to see
>> objects
>> around them the way bats use sonar. For  instance, Daniel Kish, who lost
>> his
>> sight as a baby, uses echolocation to hike along cliff edges and ride  a
>> mountain bike.
>> 
>> LINK: Watch the video below to see a blind tennis tournament.
>> http://www.youtube.com/v/6ZELzVCvaHI?version=3&hl=en_US
>> 
>> SOURCE
>> http://www.smartplanet.com/blog/science-scope/a-twist-on-tennis-allows-the-b
>> 
>> lind-to-play/12904
>> -- 
>> Please note: All articles posted to this list are copyright of their
>> Original publishers.
>> 
>> 
>> 
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