Think for a moment about how long it might take to find your toothbrush in a new hotel bathroom or how to find your own bag in a busy warm-up room, if you don’t have your eyes to assist you. Risks to safety become magnified when cues from sight are eliminated and that goes for mundane, day-to-day tasks even more than for sport specific tasks.
For visually impaired judoka there is an anomaly that is never more clearly presented than during the warm-up for an IBSA judo event. In Astana, Kazakhstan, the 2025 IBSA Judo Asian Championships is now underway and both the main tatami and the warm-up area are bustling. With a lack of clear vision, systems for safe training, keeping the team together, ensuring safety is the first priority, are the norm.
Away from judo, simply walking can be hazardous but on a judo mat, coaches guide by voice and touch, clapping to inform athletes of their location, nominating sighted personnel to lead running exercises, staying completely focused on the athletes’ needs at all times. In fact the coaches, support staff and the team as a whole ensure that judo environments are safer than non-judo environments. Tentative travel is replaced by perfect ukemi, the use of canes is replaced by free nage-komi. The tatami is a vehicle for confidence and liberty, one that is universal whether sighted or not.
