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The achievements of Russia's Paralympians can act as a powerful
stimulus to stop parents from abandoning their disabled children,
six-time Paralympic swimming gold medalist Roman Makarov (pictured) said Sept. 13.
Disabled people are marginalized, often stigmatized, in Russian
society, where basic infrastructure such as wheelchair ramps and
disabled toilets is lacking in the big cities.
But many old prejudices were broken down in the wake of Russia's
best-ever Paralympic performance in London with 102 medals, 36 of which
were gold.
“In Russia, parents often abandon children who have some problems with their health,” Makarov said.
London 2012 received the highest Russian television exposure of any Paralympics in history.
“Thanks to the exposure for the Paralympics, thanks to the fact that
everyone can see what children like that are capable of doing in the
future, there’s hope that fewer people will abandon children like that,
that lots of them will have a complete family.”
Five-time gold medalist Oksana Savchenko said after the Games that
she was stunned by how much more exposure the Paralympics had compared
to Beijing 2008 and that it would breed new respect for disabled people.
Makarov won gold in the 100 meters butterfly for the visually impaired in London, his sixth career Paralympic gold medal.
Beth Haller, Ph.D., is Co-Director of the Global Alliance for Disability in Media and Entertainment (www.gadim.org). A former print journalist, she is a member of the Advisory Board for the National Center on Disability and Journalism (https://ncdj.org/). Haller is Professor Emerita in the Department of Mass Communication at Towson University in Maryland, USA. Haller is co-editor of the 2020 "Routledge Companion to Disability and Media" (with Gerard Goggin of University of Sydney & Katie Ellis of Curtin University, Australia). She is author of "Representing Disability in an Ableist World: Essays on Mass Media" (Advocado Press, 2010) and the author/editor of Byline of Hope: Collected Newspaper and Magazine Writing of Helen Keller (Advocado Press, 2015). She has been researching disability representation in mass media for 30+ years. She is adjunct faculty in the Disability Studies programs at the City University of New York (CUNY) and the University of Texas-Arlington.
