UNDERSTANDING THE ROLE OF SPORTS AND PHYSICAL ACTIVITY IN PROMOTING INCLUSION AND QUALITY OF LIFE FOR INDIVIDUALS WITH INTELLECTUAL DISABILITY

Every child that is born with expectation of living and fulfilling life’s expectancy. The quality of life approach focuses on what is most important to every individual. However, each child is born with different challenges and peculiarity in the area of intellectual capacity. The condition could be present at birth as a congenital abnormality. An individual may be physically fit with no brain or body abnormalities and yet be mentally disabled. The terms mild, moderate, severe and profound are often used to classify intellectual disability. In view of this, it has been observed that poor motor control, high physical demand, fear of accident and social exclusion could limit the involvement of persons with intellectual disability in activities related to sport or physical activity. Therefore, it is needful to achieve social inclusion and quality of life for persons with intellectual disability through sports and physical activity.