Leap of faith - Blind Long Jump and Classifications

Monday 6^th August 2012

As it stands Team GB have 37 Medals and are in 3^rd place on the leader board.
They have excelled in the cycling, rowing and athletics. 

So far in the Athletics, Great Britain have 3 Gold Medals.
Jessica Ennis took centre stage on the 4^th August winning the Women’s Heptathlon, and other golds include Men’s 10,000m and Men’s Long Jump.

On Tuesday 4^th September in the Paralympic Games will be the Men’s Long Jump . This will be the F11 classification. 

American Paralympic Long Jumper - Lex Gillette

Blind athletes compete in classes 11 to 13. Field athletes in the class are allowed the use of technology for example electronic noises, acoustic signals, clapping or voices, if they compete in the 100m, long jump or triple jump. Blind Long Jumpers rely on the signals and muscle memory to complete their jumps. American Paralympian, Lex Gillette is tipped for the top spot at London 2012. Gillette holds the world record for his classification (F11) of the Paralympics, at 6.73 meters, or a little more than 22 feet.

What do all the classifications mean?

For the Paralympics, each of the athletes is given a letter followed by a sequence of numbers. This indicates what type of event it is and are divided into classifications to ensure fair competition.

For example in the Athletics:

F= Field sports such as Shot Put, Long Jump, Javelin etc.

T= Track sports e.g. Wheelchair 100m races, hurdles etc. 

The numbers refers to their disability.

• 11-13: track and field athletes who are visually impaired
• 20: track and field athletes who are intellectually disabled
• 31-38: track and field athletes with cerebral palsy
• 41-46: track and field amputees and les autres
• T 51-56: wheelchair track athletes
• F 51-58: wheelchair field athletes

T11 or F11 means no vision or some light perception.  
T12 or F12 means the ability to recognize the shape of a hand up to visual acuity of 2/60 and or a visual field of less than 5 degrees. 
T13 or F13 means a visual acuity of above 2/60 up to visual acuity of 6/60 and or visual field of more than 5 degrees and less than 20 degrees.

In regards to the types of assistive technology that would be used by the visually impaired athletes would vary. Athletes of T/F11 would probably use screen reader software or be keyboard only users, where as 12-13 athletes who have some sight can use screen magnification such as Zoom Text, screen Magnifiers as well as screen readers.

When we asked what Assistive Technology Lex Gillette used to send out his tweets he said, "I use VoiceOver on the iPhone and Mac"

AbilityNet has over 40 FREE Factsheets on Assistive Technology .Visit http://www.abilitynet.org.uk/

Watch AbilityNet Head of Digital Inclusion, Robin Christopherson, give a short demo on how a visually impaired person would use an iPhone:

For more information on Classifications for a whole range of Paralympic sports, please visit:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/other_sports/disability_sport/7586684.stm
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