Bradford City Football Club is pleased to support the 2017 Level Playing Field (LPF) Weeks of Action. This annual initiative, now in its 12th year, aims to celebrate access and inclusion for disabled sports fans across England and Wales.
This period of celebration and awareness began from Saturday 4 March 2017 and runs through to this Sunday (19 March).
Disabled people constitute the largest minority group at around 15% of the population and this number is increasing year on year.
Naturally, a large number of disabled people are football fans too and we are pleased to take this opportunity to thank our own disabled fans for their continued loyalty and dedication to this great club.
This year we are celebrating the ‘Game Changers’ that make a big difference to the match day experience of our disabled fans. We want to shine a light on those who lead and pioneer change that improves access and inclusion, and in many cases changing the lives of disabled people.
Bradford City has many active disabled supporters and #GameChangers, and www.bradfordcityfc.co.uk will highlight the activities they do within the community.
This Saturday's story involves our Disabled Supporters' Group.
The Bradford City Disabled Supporters' Association was formed to work with the club to advise on supporter issues, support accessibility consultation and bring about positive change to the match day experience for disabled supporters.
The group is run up by a committee of disabled fans and Chairwoman Gemma Fletcher, a wheelchair user who has been a Bradford City fan for over 18 years, is proud to be in the driving seat.
Gemma (pictured above) attends every game home and away travelling thousands of miles by train and her dad has lost count of the number of times he has pushed up her up the hills in Bradford to Valley Parade.
She enjoys the social events at the club as well meeting a few of the payers at events and she was awarded supporter of the year for 2015/16 season.
Her continued participation in the club literally got her the shirt off the back of Tony McMahon, when meeting him at an event she had explained that disabled fans are often sat away from the main travelling supporters and after the Crewe match at the end of last season he made his way to the disabled seating area to ensure she got his shirt and thank the travelling disabled supporters.
The club recently undertook a full access audit of the ground with Level Playing Field and the outcome of this will be used to bring about the right changes for disabled supporters and ensure the best accessibility that Bradford City can offer, the group will be working with the club to support practical implementation of the recommendations from the report in the coming season.
Please get the date in your diary for the groups’ AGM at 6.30pm on Monday 3rd April in 1911 club and join these #GamesChangers.
Please showcase your stories and activities #GameChangers@officialbantams@lpftweets
For more information about Level Playing Field (LPF) and this year’s Weeks of Action, please visit www.levelplayingfield.org.uk email info@levelplayingfield.org.uk or call 0208 621 2403.