The current vision of the Paralympic movement is to make for an inclusive world through Para-sport. It is therefore essential for not only Paralympic athletes, but also non-Paralympic athletes with an impairment, to be empowered by the movement. Research studies are yet to fully clarify how these non-Paralympic athletes with an impairment are empowered or disempowered by the Paralympic Games. The aim of this research is to clarify factors of empowerment and disempowerment for non-Paralympic athletes with an impairment by the Paralympic movement, focusing onnational-level partially sighted footballers. Qualitative data was recovered from a semi-structured interview for 9 subjects analyzed with thematic analysis. The data indicated that the current Paralympic movement empowers the subjects by contributing to increasing the general awareness of impairment and Para-sport. On the other hand, the subjects were conscious about the perceived gaps of circumstance, media representation, evaluation, recognition, etc. between subjects and Paralympic athletes which consequently disempower the subjects. Furthermore, the data indicated that the current Paralympic Games are mainly represented by athletes who often have visible symbols (such as wheelchairs) representing their impairment. This poses the question as to whether the Paralympic Games has the ability to enlighten people in society to fully understand people and athletes with an impairment who do not have visible symbols representing their impairment (such as partially sighted footballers).

Whereas there has been an increasing interests of media and society in Japan in para-sports, partly due to Tokyo 2020, there is a lack of research and study on para-sport coaching, including and particularly, relating to para-sports for persons with intellectual disability. The main purpose of this research is to deepen the understanding on the challenges in coaching top-athletes with intellectual disability (ID) and how to develop required coaching skills and knowledge for top-athletes with ID. This research focuses on para-table tennis, which is one of the three sports included in Paralympics (remaining two are athletics and swimming). Six purposefully selected coaches who has had a coaching experience of para-table tennis players with ID including participation in at least one official international competition during 2018-2019. The results include informal modalities of acquiring coaching skills for players with ID mostly through learning by doing, and adopting inclusive and athlete-centered approaches taking long-term athlete development into consideration.

The purpose of this study was to clarify the transition of University students’ perception towards people with intellectual disabilities through sport practices, based on 3 elements (“self”, “others” and “knowledge”) that Nakamura (2011) indicated in his study. The subjects were 60 university students, who took a general education seminar. The data was recovered from reports that students wrote after the practices and the data was analyzed both quantitatively (using KH-Coder3) and qualitatively. The data resulted in 3 main point which are the following, 1) the content of the report increased in the amount of descriptions about “self & others” and “self & knowledge”. 2) the subjects’ perception of people with intellectual disabilities has changed from conceptual “others” to realistic “others” 3) the university students came to recognize disability in relation to “self”. With these results, it possible that the characteristics of sports practices that can benefit the transitions of perception towards people with intellectual disabilities are the ease of setting common goals, intimate and diverse communication functions and a program that is set up to ensure equality of status and opportunities for involvement of sport practices.

The purpose of this study is to clarify how sport coaches for ID (persons with intellectual disabilities) recognize their own expertise. Therefore, interview research was conducted on seven coaches at soccer clubs targeted mainly at ID, and analysis was developed by using the SCAT method. The results showed that the coaches perceived the following four perspectives to be their expertise:(1) Participant-centered coaching: This perspective has become moreimportant in the way of coaching participants with difficulties to do activities independently because of their characteristics of disabilities, (2) Focusing on life stages: This perspective has become more important as we have seen the challenges that participants face during their life stage transitions, (3) Personalized coaching: This perspective has become more important in the process that participants with different stages of development aim for activities that encourage active participation and socializing skills, and (4) Focusing on communication: This perspective has become more important in aiming to improve active participation and socializing skills through good interpersonal relationships.

In recent years, the number of children with intellectual disabilities (ID) has been increasing. Numerous studies have reported that exercise intervention improved functioning in those children. However, there is few reports to examined whether media-based exercise intervention has impacts on functioning similar to face-to-face group-based exercise intervention. It is worth investigating the effect of media-based exercise intervention because some children with ID cannot participate in group activity. Therefore, the present study aimed to create media-based exercise program and to the impact of these program on physical functions and activities daily livings (ADL) in childrenwith ID.16 children with ID participated in media-based exercise intervention for 3 months. Physical functions and ADL were evaluated before and after the intervention. The WeeFIM (Functional Independence Evaluation Method for Children) was used to measure ADL. The physical functions were evaluated for posture control (one legstanding), locomotion (25m running), manipulation (ball throwing) and coordination (ball catching). As results, both physical functions and ADL did not significantly change before and after exercise intervention. That would be related to shorter exercise duration, lower frequency and program differences compared to previous studies. On the other hand, there were significant relations between physical functions and ADL related with cognition as well as motor skill.

The Netherlands is one of the few countries that has fully integrated disabled and non-disabled sports organizations and successfully increased the number of medals in the Paralympic Games. Despite such success, there has been a scarce of research into the integration process and changes in training environment of Paralympic athletes. A semi-structured interview was used to collect data and analyzed it through the qualitative method. Interviewees were key personals from NOC*NSF Paralympic program and Paralympic national teams. This study found one category: the reformation of the Paralympic teams led by the umbrella organization, and two subcategories: placement of a high-performance coaching structure and high-performance training environment. From the findings of this study, the high-performance coaching structure and training environment in the Paralympic teams were not installed by the national federations that integrated Paralympic teams, instead, installed by the NOC*NSF, which had integrated the Netherlands Paralympic Committee in 2007. The success of the Paralympic Games was the result of the direct reform of the Paralympic teams led by the NOC*NSF.

The purpose of this study was to clarify the effects of playing boccia on the image of the game and interest in adapted sport. The related factors and other educational effects were also examined. The research method consisted of a boccia session held in one 90-minute physical education class, preceded and followed by a web-based questionnaire survey. The subjects were 209 second-year students from five classes at a National College of Technology. Weanalyzed the responses of the 155 students who responded. The results showed that the image of boccia and the interest in adapted sport were significantly higher after the class than before it. One contributing factor was that many students realized that age, gender, and body size did not have much effect on winning or losing in boccia. In addition, it was confirmed that boccia can be enjoyed by people with low exercise performance as it easily creates opportunities for cooperation with others. The results of this study revealed changes in the image of boccia and interest inadapted sport after playing the game. However, the session lasted only 90 minutes and did not cover the skills and tactics involved in boccia. Future research should examine the content of the class for the appropriate development of high school students.