The eight-page booklet, titled the "British Paralympic Association Guide to Reporting on Paralympic Sport", was announced by Britain's 11-time Paralympic champion Baroness Tanni Grey Thompson here at a major media briefing at BT's head offices.

The guide is aimed to help reporters use appropriate language and terminology that is preferred by disabled people and disability groups when reporting on the Paralympic Games.

It includes a "phrases to avoid section" which suggests that words not to be used are "suffers from, afflicted with, victim of, the disabled, the blind, abnormal, spastic, retard, handicap, cripple", along with a number of other phrases.

Baroness Tanni, who presented the guidelines and took an assembled group of journalists through the terminology, feels that the guide will help protect the integrity of elite athletes who make it to the Paralympic Games.

"In sport, as in every other aspect of public life, language matters," she said.

"It defines who we are, how we are perceived and the impression we leave.

"This is why having guidelines around reporting of Paralympic sport is so important.

"We're not being politically correct – it's very important to get best practice established so that the wider effect of the Paralympic Games is as powerful as possible."

The guide also features a section titled 'being with and around disabled people' which provides suggestions such as "be direct" which says to speak in your "usual manner" rather than to change your tone which could be perceived as condescending.

It is hoped that the guide will help avoid occurrences such as the high profile incident at Beijing 2008 Games where instructions for thousands of volunteers working at the event had to be removed from official Beijing 2008 website because "inappropriate language" was used to describe disabled athletes.

Around 20 pages from the 200-page English-language document were removed following complaints about clumsy stereotypes used to describe the disabled.

The Beijing 2008 guide said: "Physically disabled people are often mentally healthy.

"They show no differences in sensation, reaction, memorisation and thinking mechanisms from other people, but they might have unusual personalities because of disfigurement and disability.

"For example, some physically disabled are isolated, unsocial and introspective; they usually do not volunteer to contact people.

"They can be stubborn and controlling; they may be sensitive and struggle with trust issues.

"Sometimes they are overly protective of themselves, especially when they are called 'crippled' or 'paralysed'."

British Paralympic Association (BPA) chief executive Tim Hollingsworth explained that he feels the new BPA media guide is necessary heading into London 2012.

"Whilst we have a performance ambition of achieving second place on the medal table with more medals across more sports, of equal importance is our ambition to change perceptions," he said.

"We had only three accredited print journalists from the UK in Beijing but have over 500 journalists and photographers from this country who have applied to report on the London Games.

"Therefore the opportunity to effect real change is huge – we have an obligation to help deliver it and these guidelines are an important aspect of that."

A similar media guide has been produced by the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) and has been available on their website since 2009.

Meanwhile, the media briefing in London also saw the BPA outline its performance ambitions for London, including a breakdown of each sport and the athletes to look out for.

With high profile guests in attendance including London 2012 chief executive Paul Deighton, Sport and Olympics Minister Hugh Robertson and UK Sport chair Baroness Sue Campbell, it also focused on how it believes London will create a wider opportunity in terms of raising awareness and understanding of disability.

For a copy of the new BPA guidelines, contact [email protected].

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