International Association for Handicapped Divers (IAHD) Instructor Training

Do you remember the first time you went scuba diving? The feeling of being able to breathe underwater, and the first sensation of being weightless once you had sorted out your buoyancy? Wasn’t it great? Well imagine a couple of new sensations being introduced along with this. The feeling of being free from a wheelchair and being able to go up and down and side to side when normally, you have to worry about smaller issues like steps and terrain. It’s an incredible feeling and as an IAHD Instructor you are in the position to be able to offer that chance of a wonderful experience and new hobby to disabled people.

The training here is conducted by Mark Slingo who is himself a wheelchair user after an accident 4 years ago. He though is the world’s first ever wheelchair user to reach the rating of PADI Course Director. Mark teaches the course trying to get you to look at things from the disabled person’s point of view and really makes the course a much more hands-on experience. Mark will really tell you what diving can do for a disabled person. He is a living example.

The course consists of a classroom session with first a discussion when you are introduced to the problems faced by disabled people, and ways we can combat those problems. You then are introduced to various examples of success stories of how disabled diving has helped people like Mark and Fraser Bathgate the world’s first wheelchair using diving instructor. You then are introduced to a wide variety of disabilities and considerations for enabling people with these various conditions to dive. The classroom session really focuses a great deal on the adaptive techniques you can use to help get more people in the water and is a really interesting and informative session.

On the course in the pool session you will simulate being an instructor for a paraplegic diver, a quadraplegic diver and a sight-impaired diver. Not only that you will also do the dive simulating each of these conditions so you can know what barriers are faced by your handicapped students.

The course will also allow you to take in considerations for various diving venues and what to look for be it boats, and accommodations that have to be made to beaches and how to deal with the obvious problem of soft sand for a wheelchair. Again the course teaches you so much and gives you something that will be useful for you in a diving career, both as a way to help disabled people to discover scuba diving and as something that you can offer a dive centre, which is a little bit different.

Go on think about taking the course it is really worth it!

Pre-requisites

PADI DIvemaster or above (or equivalent ratings)- Upon graduation from the course you will receieve the equivalent ratig from the IAHD but if you are a Divemaster this can be upgraded the moment you become an Instructor.

If you would like to know more then have a look at this awesome video of an IAHD Course conducted by Mark Slingo.