The International Blind Sports Federation (IBSA) has developed an application to help athletes with low vision or blind people access information about substances and methods prohibited in competitions, among other records. The accessory, named Ibsa Anti-Doping App, was designed by Brazilian Juliana Soares, who is the Anti-Doping Education manager at the entity. The application was launched last Thursday (25), during the Blind Football Grand Prix, held at the Paralympic Training Center in São Paulo. The mobile accessory can be downloaded for free on iOS (Apple Store) and Android (Google Play) systems. “Nowadays there is a lot of information about anti-doping in many places on the internet, not just in apps. The difference is that this is the only one 100% accessible to people with visual impairments. We collected as much relevant information on the subject as possible, in a concise way, on an accessible platform, where you can use cell phone audio or in large fonts, a tool that people with low vision usually have to see what is written better” , explained Juliana to Agência Brasil. The physical educator, who has worked in the anti-doping department of the Brazilian Paralympic Committee (CPB), was hired by Ibsa last year. According to her, the contact with the athletes, mainly in competitions, showed some lack of knowledge on the subject. Today marks the world release of the IBSA Anti-Doping App, the first of its kind in the Paralympic Movement, specially designed for blind and visually impaired people with the support of the IPC @Paralympics . Download it now!#IBSA #IBSAAntiDoping pic.twitter.com/U6kbvbQ6M7 — IBSA (@IBSABlindSports) May 25, 2023 “In the lectures and actions we were developing, the doubts [sobre o que era doping ou não] they persisted. People said that [a informação] It’s on Wada’s website [sigla, em inglês, para Agência Mundial Antidoping] and then the question was whether they would be able to access the site, because they know that most are not accessible [a pessoas com deficiência visual]. We needed to solve the problem not just with specific educational actions, but to reach more people”, said Juliana. The app is also aimed at those who work with the sport of visually impaired people and has information about prohibited substances (and the consequences of doping), risk of using supplements, testing procedures and adaptations necessary for blind and low vision athletes. , rights and duties, among other topics. There are also links to Wada’s website and to the Global Dro platform, in which the person enters the name of the medicine to find out if the medicine is prohibited. In the option to choose the modality, as soon as the application is started, there are the nine sports of which Ibsa is the international federation, three of which are part of the Paralympics: soccer for the blind, judo and goalball (the only modality of the Paralympic movement that is not a adaptation). The entity has more than a thousand registered athletes, most of whom are judokas. The goal is that, in the first year, the app reaches at least half of them. “If we manage to reach mainly judo, we will cover our highest risk modality [de doping, segundo os critérios da Ibsa e da Wada]. According to our contracts, we could only insert the Ibsa modalities as a choice. It is very important to think that accessibility, unfortunately, has not reached other federations, but it is cool to open doors for other federations to also adapt their content and platforms”, concluded the physical educator. According to the 2019 National Health Survey (PNS), carried out by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) in partnership with the Ministry of Health and published in 2021, 3.4% of the Brazilian population over two years of age (almost seven million ) declared having difficulty or not being able to see at all. Also in 2019, the World Health Organization (WHO) revealed, in a study, that 2.2 billion people live with visual impairment or lack of vision in the world.
Agência Brasil
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