An exergame is type of accessible exercise equipment with a video game component that keeps users engaged while monitoring their activity Photo courtesy UT Arlington

An estimated 16% of people worldwide live with a significant disability that impacts their daily life. Of this population, only about 40% engage in aerobic activity. Due to this lack of exercise, people with disabilities (PWD) are more likely to suffer from chronic conditions such as heart disease, stroke, diabetes, or cancer and are at higher risk of mental illnesses like depression and anxiety.

“Many PWD struggle with psychological issues such as low self-esteem and negative body image, which can further reduce their motivation to participate in exercise activities, especially in public places like gyms,” said Alexandra Jamieson, research scientist at The University of Texas at Arlington Research Institute (UTARI) and lead author of a new peer-reviewed study on adaptive exercise technologies for PWD. Former UTARI student researcher Helara D. Wijesundara is also an author on the paper.

Even PWD who are interested in exercising face challenges, as most commercial gyms lack adaptive equipment and properly trained staff to ensure their safety. Jamieson found that although some nonprofit organizations aim to promote fitness for PWD, there are few commercial efforts to reach the wider community to encourage exercise.

“The biggest barriers to fitness are accessibility and cost,” said Jamieson. “Standard gyms are not legally required to have adaptive machines for users of differing abilities. Plus, there is generally a lack of data about the demand for these adaptive machines that would help gyms justify the higher costs of adding them.”

She also noted that transportation to and from the gym can be an issue for PWD. Although ride-sharing and disabled transit options exist, they are not always reliable, and many are not equipped for PWD.

Home gyms are a popular option for PWD, but a lot of adaptative exercise equipment is produced by smaller manufacturers and has higher production costs, making it cost-prohibitive for individuals to purchase it. Jamieson suggests expanding government assistance programs around acquiring adaptative exercise machines for home use.

“Medicaid does have purchasing assistance programs for PWD to buy assistive technology, but they are not well known and only cover exercise machines that are deemed medically necessary by an individual’s doctor,” she said. Raising public awareness among physicians and PWD about how to apply for assistance to acquire adaptive exercise equipment could be a way to help.

To improve adaptive exercise options, Jamieson is working with colleagues from UTARI, the Department of Kinesiology, and the Department of Art to create an adaptive exergame machine, a type of accessible exercise equipment with a video game component that keeps users engaged while monitoring their activity. The team is currently recruiting individuals to participate in a pilot study of the technology. Please contact Jamieson if you would like additional information.

Working for a big company or in an HR role does not lower the likelihood of showing unconscious bias against disabled people at work, a new study finds.

Researchers say this is ‘surprising’ because of the money many large firms spend on EDI and unconscious bias training – in 2017 up to $8bn in the US alone – and the fact HR professionals are often specifically trained in EDI issues.

The research, a collaboration between the University of Exeter’s Business School and Medical School and funded through The Inclusivity Project, is also the first to link health status and unconscious bias, with lower levels of unconscious bias against disabled people found among those with a lower health status.

The study also found women to be less biased against disabled people than men.

Around half of the study’s 108 participants, recruited from businesses across the South West, either worked in HR or were involved in making recruitment decisions in their roles, while 50% reported working for a small to medium-sized enterprise.

They were required to perform a number of tasks, including answering questions on their own disability status and past experiences of interacting with people with a disability.

They also completed the Health Related Quality of Life survey – which focuses on an individual’s quality of mobility, self-care, usual activities, pain/discomfort and anxiety/depression – as well as taking the Implicit Association Test (IAT).

The IAT uncovers unconscious attitudes by measuring how quickly people link stimuli such as pictures of disabled and non-disabled people to positive or negative words.

Just under three-quarters of the participants showed some level of implicit bias against disabled people in favour of non-disabled people, a figure in line with existing research studies.

But the researchers found that levels of unconscious bias against disabled people were roughly the same whether participants worked for a large company or an SME.

Working in HR or in a role where you make recruitment and retention decisions was also found not to have a significant effect on implicit bias.

The finding that participants’ own disability or health status was associated with lower implicit bias is consistent with previous studies on race or gender that show people are less biased towards groups they belong to or identify with, the researchers say.

Reducing implicit bias against disabled people requires greater disability representation in the workplace, the researchers recommend.

Dr Daniel Derbyshire, a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Exeter and lead author of the study, said: “It is clear that there is a need for greater disability representation – especially within HR and at senior levels where people make hiring decisions – and that bridging this gap in representation may improve both attitudes towards disabled people and the disability employment gap.

“Addressing negative attitudes towards disabled people in the workplace should be a high priority for policy makers interested in the disability employment gap.”

Large companies may now need to rethink their EDI strategies to address the findings, the researchers suggest.

“It is surprising that neither working for a large company nor being involved in HR have a significant effect on implicit attitudes towards disabled people, which require deeper and more structural reimagining of paradigms and modes of thinking with respect to disability to meaningfully change,” said Dr Derbyshire.

“This may suggest that the current efforts of large companies compared to SMEs are not effective at reducing implicit bias and that current strategies require rethinking.”