Para sport and broadcasting:

Looking ahead to the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games

Published: September 1, 2017

With the completion of the Rio 2016 Paralympic Games held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Tokyo sets to accelerate preparation for this international sports movement for athletes with an impairment—the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games. The Tokyo Paralympics aims not only to serve as a big event in Para sport, but also to drive social reform and raise awareness for achieving an inclusive society where everyone can bring out individual strengths in rapidly aging Japan. In such a movement, broadcasting that reaches people directly has a huge role to play. As a basic premise of broadcasters’ approach to the coverage of the Tokyo 2020 Paralympics, the author looks into the relationship between “Para sport and broadcasting” by examining each element of “impairment” and “sport” separately, with a retrospective glance at each legal system, in order to overview the role of and challenges facing broadcasting, now and after the 2020 Paralympics, from a viewpoint of achieving an inclusive society.

The NHK Monthly Report on Broadcast Research

Kiyoshi Yamada, NHK Broadcasting Culture Research Institute

Reports

in Japanese