Has COVID had an impact on the activity levels of disabled individuals?
Activity Alliance, a national charity, pushes for inclusion to be at the heart of all plans in sport and activity and disabled people to be prioritised, locally and nationally.
The key objective of the Activity Alliance strategy is to battle to Achieving Fairness - our 2021-2024 strategy is ambitious, and recognises the need to tackle inactivity and inequality head on. The COVID-19 pandemic hit disabled people the hardest in many ways - our role has never been more important.
Activity Alliance’s Annual Disability and Activity Survey was launched in 2019 to provide a greater understanding about disabled people’s attitudes towards and involvement in sport and physical activity. Now, in its second year, the survey plays a crucial role. It helps to uncover the impact of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic on disabled people’s motivations and ability to be active.
Activity Alliance’s Annual Disability and Activity Survey complements Sport England’s Active Lives Adult Survey. With the focus on disabled people, this report goes into greater detail on perceptions, experiences and important issues. (Activity Alliance with support from Sport England comissioned this project.)
This year's survey results show how the pandemic is not only widening existing inequalities for disabled people but creating new ones too.
Key findings:
Twice as many disabled people felt that coronavirus greatly reduced their ability to do sport or physical activity compared to non-disabled people (27% vs 13%).
The pandemic has made disabled people feel that they do not have the opportunity to be as active as they want to, compared to non-disabled people (29% vs 44%).
Respondents said the lack of activity has led to both their physical and mental health being harder to manage. Feelings of loneliness and social isolation were frequently voiced.
A fear of contracting the virus (35% vs 13%), the impact on their health (31% vs 13%), a lack of space (23% vs 18%) and support to be able to exercise safely at home (16% vs 5%), have become significant barriers for disabled people, compared to non-disabled people.
Almost a quarter of disabled people stated that they had not received enough information about how to be active during the pandemic (23% vs 13%).
Here is the full survey results from Activity Alliance