Recommendations

AIMPA initiatives for promoting physical activity for children and youth with disabilities.

A child sitting on a soccer field with a prosthetic leg

Image Description: A child sitting on a soccer field with a prosthetic leg. They have a purple sweat suit on and are resting their arm on their leg. There is a blurred person in the background.

Our team has developed recommendations to help organizations promote and support physical activity for children and youth with disabilities.  We have five evidence-based recommendations.

Overview

Organizations Should Provide Families of Children with Disabilities with:

  1. Clear and consistent definitions of terms such as physical activity, adapted, accessible, integrated, and inclusive.
  2. Clear and detailed information about your physical activity programs, staff and facilities. Discover our Accessible Physical Activity Checklist!
  3. Information about the specific benefits of supporting physical activity for children and youth with disabilities.
  4. Ideas, tools and resources to support physical activity participation, goal setting, planning and progress.
  5. Information regarding strategies to help address barriers to physical activity participation among children and youth with disabilities.

Toolkits to Support the Use of the Recommendations

We are in the process of developing tools to help organizations use the recommendations. For now, we have created a toolkit to help provide some suggestions for applying each of the recommendations.

Review our English and French toolkits. Clicking the buttons below will re-direct you to a PDF preview in a new tab, with a download option. Please note, these are older documents. We are in the process of creating fully accessible updates.

PDF Toolkit (English)PDF Toolkit (French)

Partners

In creating these five recommendations for promoting physical activity for children and youth with disabilities, we partnered with a team of organizations and individuals.

group of 16 logos

Image Description: 16 logos of organizations. From left to right: Abilities Centre ™, Active Living Alliance for Canadians with a Disability, Active for Life ®, Canadian Paralympic Committee, Canucks Autism Network, INclusion INcorporated, MLSE Launchpad, Queen's University, ParticipACTION, Special Olympics Ontario, The Steadward Centre University of Alberta, Toronto Accessible Sports Council, The University of British Columbia Centre for Chronic Diseases Prevention and Management Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto, Variety ® The Children's Charity of Ontario, and York University.

Credits

Checklist Development Team

No project is ever done alone! We'd like to thank the people and organizations who helped develop this checklist.

Authors

School of Kinesiology and Health Science, York University:

  • Dr. Rebecca Basset-Gunter
  • Dr. Lauren Tristani
  • Victoria Larocca
  • Tharsheka Natkunman

Active Living Alliance for Canadians Living with Disabilities:

  • Jane Arkell
  • Christa Costas-Bradstreet

Funding

Funding to support the development of the recommendations was provided by The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Sport Canada Innovation Fund, and The Ontario Ministry of Research, Innovation and Science.

References

Natkunam, T., Tristani, L., Peers, D., Fraser-Thomas, J.L., Latimer-Cheung, A. E., Bassett-Gunter, R.L. (2020). Using a Think Aloud Methodology to Understand Online Physical Activity Information Search Experiences and Preferences of Parents of Children and Youth with Disabilities. Journal of Applied Research in Intellectual Disabilities, 33(6), 1478-1488.

Bassett-Gunter, R. L., Tristani, L. (June 2020). Getting the message across: A collaborative approach to establishing recommendations for the development and dissemination of physical activity information targeting parents of children with disabilities. York University, Toronto, ON. Available on the CDPP website: Getting The Message Across.

Larocca, V., Arbour-Nicitopoulos, K. P, Tomasone, J. R., Latimer-Cheung, A. E., & Bassett-Gunter, R. L. (2021). Developing and disseminating physical activity messages targeting parents: A systematic scoping review. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 18(13), 7046.