The goal is accessibility and advocacy
Three players kick a soccer ball around the pitch listening for the rattle it makes while it rolls. As they run, they repeat the word “voy” (Spanish for “I’m going”) to avoid collision. The players have varying levels of visual impairments, so they wear blackout masks over their eyes to put them on even footing. Behind the goal, a sighted person calls out directions. Suddenly, a player breaks free and kicks the ball toward a corner of the net, where it sails past a sighted goalie.
“The thing I like most about blind football is when I score because our goalies are all sighted,” explains Gad Reuben Tumusiime, a member of Strong Spirits, a team in the Blind Football Uganda league. “Blind football is actually a stepping stone to our freedom as disabled people in the country because everyone is surprised when they see us play.”
Jagwe Muzafaru, a member of the Rotary Club of World Disability Advocacy, created the football organization in 2021 to give players a sense of independence, raise their profile, and provide them new opportunities. The most recent example of this was a player who was offered an internship at a TV station through his role setting up media for a match.
The Blind Football Uganda league was founded by a member of the Rotary Club of World Disability Advocacy.
Courtesy of Blind Football Uganda
Muzafaru, who has a visual impairment, fell in love with the sport during the 2016 Paralympics. After college, he volunteered with the Uganda Paralympic Committee before securing equipment from the Tokyo-based International Blind Football Foundation to start his own league, which he administers and coaches. He learned about the Rotary club after a founding member, Ken Masson, discovered his story online and invited him to join. “Being in this club has helped me link to different people in different places of the world,” Muzafaru says. “It has been very motivating and makes me feel like I can do more, even outside of Uganda.”
Masson was a member of a small Rotary club in Massachusetts for about 30 years when his district formed a task force to address diversity, equity, and inclusion. Before he retired, Masson had worked for a social services agency where he found jobs for people with intellectual disabilities, and he wanted to make sure the district’s task force included discussion of helping those with disabilities.
Make your club communications accessible
Rotary clubs often communicate digitally through their websites, newsletters, or social media accounts. One way you can help make that information accessible to everyone is by following standards from the nonprofit World Wide Web Consortium, built on four key principles:
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Perceivable: Users can distinguish content using their senses, which might mean visually or primarily through sound or touch.
- Provide a text alternative to convey information in charts, images, recordings, and other content that isn’t text, allowing conversion to other forms such as braille or speech.
- Use colors that contrast enough to distinguish the foreground and background.
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Operable: Users can control interactive elements, including through assistive technology like voice recognition or screen readers.
- Make sure people can use a keyboard for controls, forms, or other interactive elements, as some people don’t use a standard mouse.
- Provide enough time for people who need longer to read instructions, type text, or complete other tasks.
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Understandable: Users can comprehend content.
- Use simple language free of undefined abbreviations and jargon, which helps text-to-speech technology.
- Ensure website navigation and features are consistent and operate predictably.
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Robust: Users can choose the technology they prefer to interact online.
- Make sure your content is compatible with current and future technologies, including assistive technologies.
A global effort
His reward was being named to lead a district subcommittee on the subject, which called itself the Disabilities Advisers Group and quickly blossomed to more than 80 members. Rotary International staff organized a webinar that drew on the group’s work, and the widespread interest motivated the subcommittee to branch out into something more.
The district eagerly chartered the new cause-based Rotary club in 2021. “We’ve grown rapidly,” says Masson. “People want to join the club because of the cause. That’s number one to them. Once they join, they realize the importance of Rotary.”
The club’s main goal is advocacy. One of its two meetings each month is devoted to speakers who share some of their work or experience in this area. The club posts videos of the talks to its Facebook page. Recent presenters have included Grace Ndegwa, of Kenya, who shared her personal journey with spina bifida and Daniel Lubiner, founder and executive director of the TouchPad Pro Foundation, who explained a new device that is making it easier to teach braille.
Occasionally, the club organizes a larger event, such as an online summit in October that brought together educators, parents, and students from around the world to talk about the successes and challenges of inclusive education.
Because members are spread around the globe, the club began dividing into smaller clusters that meet by time zone and language. Members support each other on a wide range of conditions, including some that are less recognized as disabilities.
Players in the Blind Football Uganda league have found new opportunities through the sport.
Courtesy of Blind Football Uganda
One of those is postpolio syndrome. Club member Mona Arsenault leads Polio Quebec, an association for polio survivors. In 1984, Arsenault, who contracted polio as a child, discovered her muscles suddenly weakening again. After many medical appointments, her doctor diagnosed her with postpolio syndrome.
A member of various support groups in the U.S. and Canada, she joined the Rotary club after meeting Masson through a postpolio syndrome advocacy group that he started. “It has opened up the world to me,” says Arsenault, who does a monthly live talk for the club online. “Ken is teaching me how to be an advocate and not just a support group leader.”
Another member, Danilo Souza, the director of digital accessibility and inclusive communication for São Paulo’s municipal office for people with disabilities, learned about the Disabilities Advisers Group on WhatsApp. He advises the club and other Rotary clubs in Brazil on increasing their impact through technological accessibility.
Souza consults with academic institutions on how to understand disabled students’ needs. He says digital accessibility has become more important after the pandemic because people conduct more of life’s business virtually, from remote work to online degree programs. The goal should no longer be to get special equipment for a few employees or students, but to ensure equal opportunities for everyone.
“I didn’t know much about Rotary, but I was interested in discussing how it could become more accessible,” says Souza. “After some months, Ken invited me to be part of the club and I understood much more about Rotary. It made sense with my own values.”
Meanwhile, Masson acts a bit like the group’s ringleader, encouraging individual efforts while advocating for people with disabilities that are both familiar and lesser-known, seeking new areas to get the club involved in. “We cover all the bases,” says Masson. “It’s a huge world, and I want to save it every day.”
This story originally appeared in the January 2025 issue of Rotary magazine.