This international Seminar aimed at examining the different aspects of the following question: Does practicing sport afford a better quality of life and better ageing, whatever one's age and health? The present session was devoted to handicapped persons.

In this field, as terminology is often imprecise, it is often necessary to begin with definitions. Taking the definitions proposed by the World Health Organization (1960), impairment should be from disability and from handicap. Impairment focuses on the medical (physiological and psychological) causes of disability resulting from trauma or pathology. Disability reflects the functional consequences of an impairment, while handicap is defined with reference to a situation. Thus the impairment of a paraplegic is the result of a medullar section, producing a disability that results in an incapacity to walk. Therefore, a person is handicapped for moving about, but under most circumstances will not be considered handicapped if he/she uses a computer: the concept of handicap can be understood as “situational”.

Two possibilities can be envisioned in order to facilitate practicing sport by persons with disabilities. One is to reinforce their “operative capacity”, which is defined as the resultant of their different functional capacities (physiological and psychological ones). In other words, the question is to examine how, and whether, sport practice adapted to the needs of disabled persons leads to enhancing their operative capacity. The other possibility is to put “handicap reducing equipment”—at the disposal of disabled persons, that is, specific equipment and facilities, in addition to specific technical aids. This presents a major challenge to work towards solving the many scientific and technical problems. For example: How to characterize and to evaluate the impact of sports practice on such and such handicap? Or, how to design handicap reducing equipment, in order to make sport practice accessible, for the different categories of handicapped persons?

Six internationally recognized European specialists, have warmly accepted the CNAPS invitation to present a comprehensive survey on these questions. Even if it was not possible to cover the whole field, we have chosen to cover what may be considered the main categories of handicap: motor (Professor D. Theisen and L. van der Woude), sensory (Professor J.C. de Potter), and mental (Professor Y. Eberhard and J. Massion) disabilities. An overall review of the beneficial influence of sports practice for ageing and handicapped persons, and the means to bring it into operation was presented by Professor H. van Coppenolle.

I would like to express my sincere thanks to the speakers, for the quality and pertinence of their lecture. Along with them and with the Associations of handicapped persons, I sincerely hope that our national and European authorities could find the ways and means to enhance sport practice, in order to afford a better quality of life and better ageing, whatever the age and health of the handicapped persons.