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special olympics

Jules Hoogland heard the basket, then made her free throw shot to cheers from the crowd.

It's a common belief that disabilities make it impossible to do certain things. Sometimes that's true—but not nearly as often as people might assume. With the right support and accommodations, people with all manner of disabilities can participate in far more activities than society expects.

Take, for instance, a team sport like basketball. Can a person who can't see play that sport? How would they know where they are on the court? How would they know where to throw the ball or locate where the basket is? How could they keep track of where their teammates are and what they're doing?

Without a little imagination in answering them, those questions seem like they'd exclude blind people from being able to play basketball. However, when inclusion is the goal, human beings can figure out all kinds of ways to make the seemingly impossible happen.

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Richard and Didi Dobbs didn't know much about Down syndrome when their nephew Sean was born with the condition in 1985.

The only thing they did know — and according to all of the information they could find on the condition — was that it was synonymous with "Mongolism." Which, as you can imagine, was less than reassuring.

"It was the '80s, and there was no Internet or anything," Didi told Upworthy. "I knew the very little that people in the '60s would know, which is that it was odd, or freaky, or scary."

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