Disabled diving

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Disabled diving is the recreational diving of disabled people who, despite being disabled, can learn to dive and acquire globally recognized qualifications.

Handicapped Scuba Association logo

The training requirements are by no means reduced compared to the non-disabled, but rather increased. Because despite the possibly limited skills of the student diver , the same safety standard must be observed as with a non-disabled scuba diver. In some cases, the student concerned has to learn other, more difficult techniques in order to be able to dive safely. Every training of a disabled recreational diver is individual.

Part of the safety concept is the correct classification of the disabled recreational diver. There are divers who can help themselves and their diving partner in an emergency, those who can only help themselves and those who cannot help themselves in an emergency. The required number and qualifications of diving guides depends on this.

Handicapped Scuba Association

The guidelines for diving training with handicapped people were largely defined, standardized and further developed worldwide by the non-profit diving organization Handicapped Scuba Association (HSA). There are local HSA associations and clubs in many countries .

Scale diving
HSA offers trial dives for disabled people . You can experience diving without obligation. How this introductory dive is carried out is spontaneously adapted to the individual possibilities of the interested party.
HSA diver
Physically impaired divers can complete the HSA Open Water Diver course (HSA OWD) and are then entitled to dive in open water together with one or more non-disabled buddies who have completed HSA Dive Buddy training. The implementation of the learning content of the HSA OWD is individually adapted to the possibilities of the diver. So need z. B. a paraplegic and quadriplegic significantly more support than the visually impaired or deaf . HSA enables disabled people, in addition to basic diving training, to complete special courses and diving training for advanced divers. These include the HSA Advanced Open Water Diver (HSA AOWD) a Nitrox ProNRC course.
HSA Dive Buddy
The HSA Dive Buddy course serves to prepare experienced, non-disabled divers for diving together with HSA divers. This training builds on the participants' self-awareness. Each graduate simulates certain forms of handicap warming up on the training dives. In addition, the flexibility and creativity of the participants is challenged because, unlike in the training of other diving organizations, there are no always applicable solutions.
HSA instructor
Diving instructors and dive leaders (divemasters) can learn the training of HSA divers and dive buddies in an HSA instructor course . The HSA instructor builds directly on the HSA Dive Buddy course.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Nicole Schlemmer: Wheelchair users learn to dive. In: Taucher Revue No. 135. Verein Taucher Revue, March 1, 2009, accessed on March 17, 2020 .
  2. ↑ a b Feeling weightless despite a wheelchair / En état d'apesanteur malgré le fauteuil roulant. (PDF) In: Nereus 6 (Pages: 34–35). SUSV , December 20, 2010, accessed on March 17, 2020 (German, French).
  3. ↑ a b c d Interview: Making the impossible possible! SWISS DIVERS, March 16, 2020, accessed on March 17, 2021 .