PADI Professionals have a long and successful history of working with divers with disabilities. PADI’s approach to diver education is (and always has been) inclusive: Everyone who meets a course’s prerequisites is welcome to enroll. The PADI Adaptive Techniques Specialty course builds on that foundation by enhancing the training PADI Professionals receive, and preparing them for student-centered and prescriptive approaches when adapting techniques to meet diver needs.
PADI Instructors or PADI Divemasters who have completed EFR Primary and Secondary Care course within 24 months are eligible to take the PADI Adaptive Techniques Specialty course.
The course consists of one knowledge development session that introduces the concept of holistic teaching and explores equipment and logistical considerations. It also includes a workshop that helps you look at dive centre accessibility from the perspective of people with various disabilities.
There are two confined water workshops that focus on transfers, entries, exits, assists and communication, along with demonstrating, adapting and practicing skills based on a student diver’s abilities and limitations. The two open water workshops focus on evaluating accessibility, organizing and pacing dives, and adapting skills to the open water environment.
Why should you take this course?
When training people with physical and mental challenges, you learn to focus on what they can do rather than on what they can’t. You don’t have to take this specialty to work with divers with disabilities, but the knowledge and skills you gain can help you adapt course content to accommodate virtually any student diver. This specialty course will expand your ability to be student-centered and prescriptive in approach when adapting scuba or freediving techniques.
Adaptive Techniques Specialty Course Goals
To help PADI Pros:
Become more aware and mindful of individual considerations when introducing people with disabilities to diving or freediving.
Learn new adaptive techniques to use while supervising and training divers/freedivers with disabilities in PADI courses and programs.
Properly counsel and direct student divers, based on their abilities, toward PADI certification, PADI experience programs or toward a disabilities-dedicated diving organization.
Explore additional ways to motivate and encourage student divers with mental and/or physical challenges.