Paralympic attendances and general availabilityAthlete and spectator attendanceFrom beginning as a small friendly competition between post-WWII veterans with spinal cord injuries in 1948 in Stoke England, we have seen the slow change of how they are countries changed their view of disabled participants, allowing the Paralympics to evolve. With the multiple growths that have developed in recent years, such as the athlete participation shown in Figure 1.1, it can be seen that there has been a great evolution in the world of disability with the increase in participants around the world. In the span of 8 years alone, from 2004 to 2012, there was growth in 496 competitors and 28 countries. Not only this, but there has been an increase of over 1.5 million tickets sold in the last four matches from Sydney 2000 to London 2012, showing that there has been increased interest in the Paralympic Games in recent years. This is a dramatic increase especially when you consider that they only started selling tickets to the Paralympics in 1996 in Atlanta, USA, along with television rights and sponsorships. From this it can be understood that the IPC (International Paralympic Committee) pushed for the games to be more publicized in all countries. charity for disabled people across the UK. Of the 11 million disabled people, only two in ten are active in the UK and they are working to increase this proportion by working closely with partners such as national disability sport organizations and national governing bodies for sport. Having said that, the EFDS also covers and assists all c...... middle of paper ...... admit that four main obstacles have been stated: transportation, cost of the program, lack of energy and lack of knowledge about the program. In one of the projects funded by the CDC they eliminated these barriers in several ways, they provided free transportation, they didn't charge anything for the program, they provided door-to-door transportation so as to reduce the level of fatigue that often occurs to get to the site and develop an accessible, individually designed exercise program in a newly built fitness center. In the first group of participants in the 12-week program, their participation was above 85% and none of the participants dropped out of the program. Within these findings it is possible to see what factors could be eliminated to break down these barriers for disabled people. They will continue this research and hope, in time, to implement these changes in all countries.