Australian tennis player Dylan Alcott competes at the 2022 Australian Open.
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July is Disability Pride Month. Behind the Headlines will feature people claiming their disability and excelling. Claiming disability means actively accepting their condition and integrating it into their identity.

Alcott has made a lot of racket in his career! Serving up matches and breaking records, Dylan Alcott became the first man to win the Golden Slam—all four major title tournaments and the Paralympic Games—in 2021. Alcott is a retired Australian wheelchair tennis player. He also played wheelchair basketball with the Australian Rollers national team. In 2022, Australia named Alcott Australian of the Year and an Officer of the Order of Australia.

Dylan Martin Alcott was born Dec. 4, 1990, in Melbourne. At birth, Alcott had a tumor wrapped around his spinal cord. Surgeons successfully removed the tumor. However, the surgery left him paraplegic—that is, paralyzed in the legs and lower body. He began playing wheelchair tennis in school, competing globally by the age of 16. Alcott started playing wheelchair basketball when he was 14 years old. He played with the Rollers in the 2006 Wheelchair Basketball World Championship. At the age of 17, Alcott won a gold medal at the 2008 Paralympic Games in Beijing, China, with the Rollers.

In 2009, Alcott began studying at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, in the United States. He led the school’s wheelchair basketball team to win the college championship. After his first year, he returned to Australia to prepare for the 2012 Paralympic Games in London, England. Alcott and the Rollers won the Wheelchair Basketball World Championship for the first time in 2010 in Birmingham, England. In 2012, they won silver at the Paralympics.

Australian tennis star Dylan Alcott competes in the men’s quads wheelchair singles at the Wimbledon Championships.
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In 2012, Alcott suffered serious injuries to his hand and arm when someone tried to move him in his wheelchair. The injury made Alcott eligible to participate in the quad class of wheelchair tennis and spurred his return to that sport. The quad class is reserved for players that also have some impairment in their playing arm. In 2014, he won the British Open Wheelchair Tennis Championship and the New Zealand Open. In 2015, Alcott won the quad wheelchair Australian Open title. Alcott was ranked number one in the world in 2015 after securing eight titles.

At the 2016 Paralympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Alcott won the men’s quad doubles gold medal with the Australian wheelchair tennis player Heath Davidson. The next day, he won the men’s quad singles gold medal. Alcott was named Australian Paralympian of the Year for his success at the games. In 2018, Alcott won the Wheelchair Tennis Masters title.

In 2021, Alcott became the third professional and the first man to complete the Golden Slam in a calendar year. He won the Australian Open, the French Open, Wimbledon, the United States Open, and the singles gold medal at the Paralympic Games in Tokyo. (The games, originally scheduled for 2020, were postponed to 2021 as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.) At the end of 2021, Alcott announced that the 2022 Australian Open would be his last professional competition. Alcott’s memoir Able: Gold Medals, Grand Slams and Smashing Glass Ceilings was published in 2018.

South African DJ Black Coffee
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July is Disability Pride Month. Behind the Headlines will feature people claiming their disability and excelling. Claiming disability means actively accepting their condition and integrating it into their identity.

Over thirty years ago, the world-renowned DJ Black Coffee was in a taxi accident during celebrations for the release of South African activist Nelson Mandela from prison. He suffered an injury that permanently paralyzed his left arm. Black Coffee is the stage name of Nkosinathi Innocent Sizwe Maphumulo, a South African disc jockey (DJ) and music producer. He creates electronic dance music (EDM). Black Coffee is known for his futuristic, tribal, and jazz-inspired sounds.

Maphumulo was born on March 11, 1976, in Durban, South Africa. Maphumulo grew up in Mthatha, in the Eastern Cape. Maphumulo later studied jazz music at the Durban University of Technology. Black Coffee earned one of two spots for South African artists in the Red Bull Music Academy in Cape Town in 2003. The academy is a traveling EDM festival and workshop. Maphumulo released his first album, Black Coffee, in 2005. His breakthrough hit was the single “Happiness” (2005).

Black Coffee began making appearances at nightclubs and music festivals. His other albums include Have Another One (2007), Home Brewed (2009), Africa Rising (2012), and Pieces of Me (2015). He released the EP Music is King in 2018. EP stands for extended play and is a type of musical recording that includes several songs but is not considered a full-length album. In 2022, Black Coffee won a Grammy award for best dance/electronic album for Subconsciously (2021).

Black Coffee has spoken out about how he stopped wearing his arm brace due to bullying and also rarely shows his left arm in public. Black Coffee has honed the hands-on skill of disc jockeying.