Environmental Barriers to Participation in Physical Activity: A Legal Perspective

Disability in human societies dates back to the history of humanity and the extent of disability in the world is irrefutable. According to a report published by the World Health Organization, about 1.5% of the world's population is disabled. The existence of millions of disabled people around the world has raised the issue of disability as a global issue and the issue of human rights of people with disabilities is one of the greatest challenges of today's societies. Therefore, the rights of disabled people have been attentive to the United Nations and other international organizations over a long period of time. The UN General Assembly, in its most important step in 2006, approved the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and its related optional protocol. The purpose of this Convention is to protect the rights of persons with disabilities from all human rights and fundamental freedoms and to promote respect for their inherent dignity. One of the basic rights of persons with disabilities is the right to participate in sports activities. Because the participation of the disabled in sports activities has increased the level of happiness, self-confidence, independence, socialization and life expectancy. The aim of this survey was to investigate environmental barriers to participation in physical activity through a legal perspective. The research was practical in purpose and data collection method was descriptive – survey. The study population of this study includes all physically and mentally handicapped people in Golestan province, of whom 173 individuals were selected through random sampling. The research instruments for were a questionnaire designed by Poorrnjbar (1393), Zebardast (1395), Text Convention on the Rights of Disabled Persons (Jan Ghorban & Zare, 1390) and other specialized texts, whose validity was confirmed by the professors. The internal consistency of the questionnaire was obtained by using the Cronbach's alpha coefficient for the whole questionnaire (alpha = 0.87). The Friedman test, t test and Pearson  correlation coefficient were used to test the research hypotheses.  Statistical Package for Social Sciences Software (version 21) was used to analyze the data. Research findings on the description and prioritization of the average rating among types of activities of the disabled persons in leisure time showed that participation in sports activities was among the lowest rank. Among the 18 indicators of the legal status of the disabled, the only 3 indicators, namely, "the right to education and equal opportunity at all levels and in the form of lifelong learning, respect for the inherent dignity and individual autonomy, enjoying the right to liberty and individual security equal to others" from the perspective of the disabled persons were found to be desirable. Also, there is a negative and significant relationship between the level of activity of the disabled and each of the barriers at the 99% confidence level; From the strongest to the weakest severity of the relationship with the degree of participation of persons with disabilities, respectively, are the "economic", "sports facilities and facilities", "social protection", "information and advertising", "access to the gym and playgrounds", "management and program" "And "mental and physical barriers". According to the findings of this research, economic and social support is one of the effective factors in increasing the participation of the disabled persons in sports activities.