Editing Paralympic Games (section)

====Functional classification (since the 1980s)====
[[File:Goalball vid Paralympics i Aten.jpg|thumb|right|alt=Three men wearing eye shades laying on the floor, a red ball is to the left of the image|The Swedish goalball team at the [[2004 Summer Paralympics]]]]
While there is no clear date when the shift occurred, a functional classification system became the norm for disabled athletic classification in the 1980s. In a functional system, the focus is on what effect the athlete's impairment has on his or her athletic performance. Under this system, athletes with total loss of function in their legs will compete together in most sports, because their functional loss is the same and the reason for the loss is immaterial. The only exception to the functional system is the classification format used by [[International Blind Sports Federation]] (IBSA), which still uses a medically based system.<ref name=classification/>

Some sports are only held for certain disability types. For example, [[Goalball at the Summer Paralympics|goalball]] is only for visually impaired athletes. The Paralympics recognizes three different grades of visual impairment, consequently all competitors in goalball must wear a visor or "black out mask" so that athletes with less visual impairment will not have an advantage.<ref>{{cite web|title=Goalball|publisher=International Paralympic Committee|url=http://www.paralympic.org/Sport/IOSD_Sports/Goalball/index.html|access-date=2010-04-08 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20091024104216/http://www.paralympic.org/Sport/IOSD_Sports/Goalball/index.html | archive-date=2009-10-24}}</ref> Other sports, like [[Athletics at the Summer Paralympics|athletics]], are open to athletes with a wide variety of impairments. In athletics, participants are broken down into a range of classes based on the disability they have and then they are placed in a classification within that range based on their level of impairment. For example: classes 11–13 are for visually impaired athletes, which class they are in depends on their level of visual impairment.<ref>{{cite web|title=Athletics |publisher=Australian Paralympic Committee |url=http://www.paralympic.org.au/Sport/SportProfiles/Athletics.aspx |access-date=2010-04-07 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100118115126/http://www.paralympic.org.au/Sport/SportProfiles/Athletics.aspx |archive-date=2010-01-18 |url-status=dead }}</ref>
There are also team competitions such as [[Wheelchair rugby at the Summer Paralympics|wheelchair rugby]]. Members of the team are each given a point value based on their activity limitation. A lower score indicates a more severe activity limitation than a higher score. A team cannot have more than a certain maximum total of points on the field of play at the same time to ensure equal competition. For example, in wheelchair rugby, the four players' combined disability number must total no more than eight points.<ref>{{cite web|title=Wheelchair Rugby|publisher=International Paralympic Committee|url=http://www.paralympic.org/Sport/IF_Sports/Wheelchair_Rugby/index.html|access-date=2010-04-08|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100619180525/http://paralympic.org/Sport/IF_Sports/Wheelchair_Rugby/index.html|archive-date=2010-06-19}}</ref>