Technology and Sports

 


    Technology is a major part of our modern society, always evolving and changing. Adaptive technology has been used in disabled sports for a while and is also always changing. I do think that adaptive technology should be allowed in disabled sports. For practice athletes should be allowed to use whatever type of technology they want or are comfortable with. On the other hand, I think that there should be some type of regulation on the technology that is allowed to be used in competition. With all of the new technology coming out, it's going to be common that one athlete could come in with state-of-the-art equipment, while another athlete has adaptive technology from ten years ago because that is all that they can afford. Major competitions like the Olympics should be putting regulations on what can be used like everyone has to have devices from the same year or manufacture. Athletes competing in the games who come from disadvantaged nations that cannot afford the technology are unfortunately at a strong disadvantage. One way to prevent this from happening would potentially be for the games to provide the same type of equipment to every single athlete who entered the games. Unfortunately, the major downside to that idea is that it would cost a lot of money for the Paralympics to be able to provide custom adaptive gear to every athlete who needed it. 
    As far as disabled athletes wanting to compete in able-bodied sporting events, that is a tricky and complicated question to answer. I think that if the athlete had a strong desire to compete with able-bodied people I don't think that they should just simply be denied access to do so just because they are disabled. Furthermore, if the disabled athlete is a long-time competitor and is posting numbers somewhat similar to what the able-bodied competitors I think that would make people feel better about allowing them to compete together. For example, if both athletes are completing a mile run around 6-7 minutes then they would fall under the same category and any major outliers on either side would have to be weeded out. Another way for disabled athletes to be able to compete in able-bodied sporting events could be if they hosted inter-abled competitions. These competitions would allow athletes to willingly choose to compete knowing that they were going to be competing against disabled and able-bodied people. The wonderful world of technology is ever-evolving and becoming stronger as we know it, it's time we get on the train and adapt to this new adaptive technology.

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