Football and its communities: the celebration of Manchester United FC’s Ability Suite (original) (raw)
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European Sport Management Quarterly, 2016
Research question: To which extent do Disabled Supporters Associations (DSAs) contribute to improve access of fans with disabilities to football? This research question addresses two interrelated gaps: The lack of attention to supporters in European policies on inclusion in and through sport, and the excessive focus on physical barriers over other dimensions of access in both policy and research on disability and sport. Research methods: The study uses visual auto-ethnography. Seven disabled supporters, members of three different DSAs at football clubs in England took part in the study. They were asked to take photographs of their life as a supporter over a period of eight weeks, and were interviewed at the end to discuss and clarify the meaning of the pictures. Results and Findings: Attention to physical spaces is not enough to ensure inclusivity in the stands. Further dimensions need attention by clubs, including knowledge, relationships and participation, and power of advocacy. DSAs have the potential to play a pivotal role in helping clubs improving their provisions for disabled fans, since they act as both a social forum a point of contact for clubs, but they are hampered for their lack or resources and clubs' almost exclusive focus on physical access. Nind and Seale's multi-dimensional model of access for the disabled is one useful way of interpreting these results. Implications: Conceptual understandings of access and inclusion can be broadened by using Nind and Seale's model. Policies addressing inclusion in football should focus not only on those doing sport, but also on those spectating.
European Academy of Management: Managing Sport General Track, 2020
Research has shown that for people with disabilities and older adults, there are substantial differences in the supply side of accessible services and facilities, quality of service and experience at sport stadiums. This has led to increasing political, legal and social pressures on national governing bodies and professional football clubs to enhance accessibility, quality of service and experience for supporters with disabilities (SwD) and ageing supporters, described as the 'new generation of sport consumers' (reference withheld for anonymity). Sport management literature at present focuses primarily on regulatory pressures to ensure that stadia meet existing accessibility requirements, while at the same time most of the updated legislation and guidelines on access to stadia fail to incorporate the quality of service and experience for these supporter groups. Very few studies have sought to examine how professional football clubs seek to manage their human rights obligations and accessibility at contemporary stadia through policies and processes designed to cater to the needs and expectations to these groups of supporters. This study begins to address this research gap by setting out the process through which we have developed a theoretically informed, integrative managerial and performance measurement framework that seeks to measure the extent to which professional football club stadiums are accessible. We outline the three-step methodological process through which we have developed the European Accessible Football League Scale: a scale containing seventy-one brought to you by CORE View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk provided by Ulster University's Research Portal 2 indicators across five phases of the supporter experience that collectively provide the tool to better understand stadium accessibility within European football. These indicators were developed and selected from previous academic research practitioner reports and guides on accessibility at national and international level, ongoing exchange with an expert panel of several Disability Liaison officers and Access coordinators at the main football leagues, and integrated with the five phases of the Holistic Journey Sequence approach to stadia (the 'HOPES' model). This accessibility scale has managerial implications not only for the football industry but will also be applicable to other sporting venues and the events industry.
The needs of disabled fans must not be ignored when sports stadiums reopen to spectators
London School of Economics and Political Science, 2021
argue the sports industry must facilitate a disability-inclusive restart for spectator sports. Drawing on a recent study, they outline a series of recommendations that could be used by stadium operators to ensure the pandemic does not lead to further neglect of the needs and rights of disabled people in the context of sport. During the Covid-19 pandemic disabled people have been disproportionally impacted. A recent survey of the lived realities of disabled people conducted by Inclusion London concluded that they have been abandoned, forgotten and ignored by policymakers, local authorities and other service providers.
Inclusive Design a Source of Innovation: A Case Study & Prototype on Soccer Spectatorship
2018
Access to soccer content is achieved mostly through visual cues that convey spatial relations between the ball and players, supplemented by spoken and/or written commentary. Unfortunately, for nonvisual spectators who rely on spoken and written commentary alone, spatial information is lost. Fieldwork in Colombia was selected, designed, and executed in order to observe a unique tactile sign language system that is Co-Designed by actual soccer spectators – a sign language interpreter and a Deaf-Blind spectator. Two portable cameras (GoPro Hero3) were used to capture the live interpretation inside the stadium. Video analysis and field notes revealed how the loss of spatial relations between the ball and players is counteracted by employing a combination of props and gestures. Iterative prototyping through user testing was developed with the aim to design instructions that would teach any visual spectator how to interpret the game from visual to tactile modality. The mixture of ethnogra...
Toward an understanding of the needs of sport spectators with disabilities
2006
Linkage between the current study and existing literature ………………………... Limitations of the study …………………………………………………………… 140 Areas for Future Research ………………………………………………………… Managerial Implications …………………………………………………………... 145 Conclusion ……………………………………………………………………….... CHAPTER TWO REVIEW OF LITERATURE This chapter is presented by first reviewing the disability literature, including an overview of the Americans with Disabilities Act, an examination of how the sport and recreation industries are continuing to implement the ADA, and a discussion of the emerging awareness to provide an enhanced service experience for guests with disabilities. Next, a review of the service quality literature is provided including a discussion of how the existing literature informed the study. Americans with Disabilities Act Overview of the Americans with Disabilities Act The ADA was enacted to provide a national mandate to eliminate discrimination faced by individuals with disabilities on a day-today basis (42 U.S.C. 12101(b)). The ADA prohibits discrimination in employment, public services, and places of public accommodations operated by private entities (Wong, 2002). The key provisions applicable to sport facilities are Title II and Title III (Grady & Andrew, 2003). Title II mandates that public entities, including state and local governments, give people with disabilities an equal opportunity to benefit from all of their programs, services, and activities (42 U.S.C.12132). Title III provides protection for individuals with disabilities seeking access to places of public accommodation (42 U.S.C. 1282) and prohibits a public accommodation from denying people with disabilities the opportunity to benefit from goods or services, or by providing people with disabilities with different or separate goods or services (28 C.F.R. 36 et seq., 2000). The requirements for facility accessibility, including sport stadiums, are laid out in Title II and Title III of ADA as well as in the federal regulations implementing the ADA. The ADA has two distinct standards for stadium accessibility, depending on date of construction and date of first occupancy. For newly constructed "assembly areas" set for first occupancy after January 26, 1993, and for alterations occurring after January 26, 1992 (referred to as "newly constructed" facilities), there are far more rigorous accessibility requirements (28 C.F.R. § § 36.401-.402, 36.406 (2003)). These requirements include wheelchair accessible seating, companion seats, comparable lines of
Managing Sport and Leisure
Our aim in this short article is to provide an analysis of the implications of reopening football stadium doors to a group that have not been at the forefront of management considerationdisabled spectators. In order to achieve this aim, we uphold a social model approach to disability to review the current spectator sport situation across English professional football and outline the problems posed for disabled fans. We then provide the context to disabled people's experiences in football fandom which have often been unsatisfactory. This context then underpins a series of implications that will arise from the reopening of stadia in England. To conclude this commentary, we provide several management recommendations that we argue should facilitate a more disability-inclusive restart for spectator sport.
Inclusive by design: transformative services and sport-event accessibility
his paper examines the service dimensions required to be inclusive of people with access needs within a major-sport event context. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities seeks to counter disability discrimination and enable citizenship rights of people with disabilities, including access to goods and services, across all dimensions of social participation including major-sport events (e.g. Olympic and Paralympic Games, world cups in football, cricket and rugby union). Providing for people with disability and access needs is also an emerging tourism focus with initiatives addressing accessible tourism included in the World Tourism Organizations mission and recent strategic destination plans. To enhance the understanding of service delivery for an accessible tourism market in a major-sport event context, a case study of the Vancouver Fan Zone for the FIFA Womens World Cup Canada, 2015 is analyzed through the lens of transformative services. From this analysis future research directions are identified to benefit those with access needs who wish to participate in major-sport events.
Journal of applied research in intellectual disabilities : JARID, 2017
People with learning disabilities (LD) are particularly vulnerable to mental health and behavioural difficulties, and it has been shown that regular exercise can improve psychosocial well-being as well as physical fitness. This research aims to explore the experiences of men with LD detained in secure settings who have engaged in community football training programmes and identify the benefits of such provision. Interviews were conducted with eight patients in a forensic LD service, discussing their experiences of participating in community football. Template analysis was undertaken on the transcripts. Two master themes were identified: physical fitness and psychosocial benefits. As the analysis progressed, new emerging themes were identified around role identity and achievement, as well as extending and refining some of the themes from the original template including fun and belonging. Some anticipated themes were removed from the template entirely. The psychosocial benefits of org...