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Blog: 'As the BBC, we have the ability to reach wider audiences'

The English Federation of Disability Sport (EFDS) website features a blog post every Friday through the year.

May's theme is communications. This week, Sharon Fuller, Project Lead at Get Inspired, BBC Sport’s Participation Initiative, discusses addressing the barriers to participation and BBC Sport's crucial role.

Sharon's blog:

BBC Get Inspired is the BBC’s campaign to get more people active.

We’re really focused on using the BBC’s unique position to be able to reach new and wider audiences with the message of participation in different and entertaining ways.

We need to address some of the barriers to participation and to connect people with the right information to be able to take the next steps.

This isn’t a straightforward and clear route - we are all individuals, with our own very personal reasons for exercising, or not.

So we at Get Inspired have put together, and are continually developing, a ‘kit of parts’ to try and make this as simple as possible.

Key to this for us is making information on sports for disabled people more accessible.

It’s an area where we recognise there isn’t currently much information available and we want to help to make that better over the next 12 months.

As a public service organisation we have the ability to reach wider audiences than others, but we can’t deliver on our own.

We want to encourage organisations which already do brilliant work to get in touch with us, so that we can help them reach the people who really need access to that information.

We have a searchable activity finder database which can serve up results by postcode, and we also have activity by activity guides to the basic information which you might need to know. Our website contains some lovely inspirational stories and our social media accounts encourage others to share their experiences

BBC Get Inspired video on volunteers

In my role as Project Lead for BBC Get Inspired, I am very lucky to be able to meet all kinds of amazing and inspirational people, which I find incredibly motivating.

In our People’s Cup event, which we delivered in partnership with the FA, we made disability categories core to the plan, and as such our winners will be heading off to Wembley on the 30 May for a VIP trip to the FA Cup Final.

I care deeply about sharing the benefits of physical activity, but I also know that if it isn’t fun, people won’t want to take part.

One of the biggest reasons for not participating is self-confidence. The latest Sport England Active People Survey shows that there has been a significant drop in disabled people taking part in physical activity, and it shows how crucial it is that we ensure we do all we can to do something positive to help improve this.

We’re doing this by using more disabled people in our Get Inspired coverage, by connecting better with EFDS and by letting you know about the tools that we have to be able to connect activity providers to more people.

If you like to get in touch with the team they can be reached via the email address getinspired@bbc.co.uk or visit the website Get Inspired.