by Daniel Parker, RDPFS Contributor:
The State University of New York (SUNY) College of Optometry recently hosted an interview with Associate Clinical Professor Dr. Robert Chun, who serves as a vision impairment (VI) classifier for the International Paralympic Committee (IPC). During the interview, he first described the history of the Paralympics, which began when Sir Ludwig Guttmann, a German-Jewish neurologist who had fled to England just before World War II, according to the National Paralympic Heritage Trust (NPHT), organized a sporting event for his spinal injury patients in 1948. The first official Games were held in Rome in 1960. According to Dr. Chun, of the 22 total sports in the Summer Paralympics, held this year in Paris, athletes with vision loss can compete in exclusive sports, like blind football (soccer) and goalball, as well as in mixed-disability sports like athletics and swimming. In addition, three of the six Winter Paralympic sports, para-alpine skiing, para-biathlon and para-cross-country skiing, are open to this demographic. Of his work on the IPC, Dr. Chun states: “Our role as a VI classifier is to measure visual function with special methods to categorize athletes by severity of vision loss. Why this is important is that we want to ensure fair competition so that one athlete with total blindness is not competing against another with partial blindness. This takes many specialists working together including all the scientific researchers…to validate all the methods we use.” When asked how he became involved, he added, “I became a low vision qualifier because I had a mentor in Chicago that recommended me for the role. He bought my plane ticket to take a special course and exam in Athens, Greece to be certified with about 20 others, and here I am almost 10 years later. Today, …45 optometrists and ophthalmologists from all over the world…are certified international vision impairment classifiers. We work as a close team… And, we are all driven to support our athletes and the Paralympic movement.” The video interview with Dr. Chun is available here.
