In the 1980s, British citizen Steve Varden was living with cerebral palsy, a movement and muscle-tone disorder often caused by abnormal brain development. For someone with cerebral palsy, even walking can prove difficult. Then Varden tried hang gliding and realized that in the sky the challenges brought on by his disability all but disappeared. He soon learned to pilot a hang glider, inviting people to fly in tandem with him. The experience was life-changing. “When I am in the air, other people have little choice but to respect me and take notice of my abilities,” he says. “They can no longer afford to patronize me or underestimate me. Their life depends on my skills.”
He took stock of what hang gliding brought to his life— independence, confidence, fun—and realized that other people living with disabilities might also benefit from such an experience. In 1997, he founded Flyability, an organization that provides disabled people with the knowledge, support, and equipment necessary to get them soaring through the air on a hang glider or paraglider. Having received charitable donations, Flyability also provides scholarships for those wanting to take courses, either to learn to paraglide and hang glide, or to become a pilot who can take passengers on a tandem ride.
Flyability offers this opportunity to people with such disabilities as multiple sclerosis, visual impairment, deafness, paralysis, amputation, and even arthritis. “Often, the disabled are living on financial aid because they can’t work,” says Flyability secretary Shelley Smith, who works as a flying instructor as well. “They also have higher costs, such as special adaptations for the car or medical treatment. Oftentimes, there’s no money left for doing anything they might enjoy.”
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Many disabled who have always dreamed of flying find Flyability through an Internet search and send an email through the site. “One man wrote to me that he had MS, and that he had little ability left in his arms and wished he had emailed sooner,” says Smith. “We wrote back and said, ‘Nothing’s stopping you. Even if you’re in a wheelchair, we have the equipment to help you fly.’ ” This equipment includes specially-made, lightweight aluminum three-wheeled chairs that connect to paragliding or hang gliding apparatuses.
Another person contacted Flyability after he took a paragliding trip in India, flew into a hill, broke his back, and became paralyzed. He was in intense rehabilitation at a U.K. hospital when he checked himself out and decided he had to get back up in the air. “He said, ‘I can’t walk up a hill to push myself off in the glider anymore, but I’d really like to fly again,’ ” Smith recalls. “The hospital told him he was crazy, but we loaned him a three-wheel buggy. We launched him off a flat field with a winch and since then he’s been flying again.”
Andy Campbell emailed Flyability because he’d fallen 60 feet onto his back in a climbing accident, shattering his spine and hips. Says Smith, “He knew he had two choices: curl up in a ball and die or get back the independence he had before.” He asked Flyability, “Where do I need to go and what do I need to do in order to fly again?” Smith remembers, “He wouldn’t take no for an answer.” Having mastered paragliding with support from Flyability, Campbell is now on a two-year paragliding journey around the world.
“For the disabled, learning to fly affects the mindset in everything they do,” says Smith. “It makes them realize that you can do this, just like anybody else. It stops them from saying, ‘This part of life is no longer available to me,’ and encourages them to say, ‘Yes, I can.’ ”
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