Bearing in mind the importance of sport and recreational activities for the overall life and social integration of people with disabilities, on 27 June 1964, the Serbian Association for Sport and Recreation of People with Disabilities was founded in Vrnjacka Banja, and the Disability Sport Association of Serbia is its legal successor.
Ever since 1964, the Disability Sport Association of Serbia has been the largest-scale sports organization for sports and recreation of persons with disabilities in the Republic of Serbia. The main goal of the Association, since its formation, is the inclusion of all categories of persons with disabilities in sports activities with a view of improving and advancing their psychophysical condition, as well as their inclusion in normal streams of life.
As the umbrella disability sport organization in Serbia, the Association actively advocates for the most intensive engagement of young people in sports activities, both professionally and recreationally. Members of the Associations are organizations based across the entire territory of Serbia, and the president of the Federation is Dragan Janketic.
In elite sports, people with disabilities have shown that they are not lagging behind athletes in the regular program. The Association has produced many successful athletes, medal winners in table tennis, athletics, chess, shooting sport, swimming, archery, bowling, sport fishing and other sports, including athlete Tanja Dragic, who set the world record in javelin throw in 2011, Drazenko Mitrovic, the world record holder in the discus throw, Milos Grlica, athlete who won a bronze medal at the World Championships in 2011, and scorers of top results who won many medals: Dragan Ristic, Rastko Jokic, Sinisa Vidic, Zivko Papaz, Mirjana Ilic – Djuricin, Borislava Peric – Rankovic, Nada Matic, Zorica Popadic, Sanja Mitrovic, Mitar Palikuca, Ilija Djurasinovic, Zlatko Kesler, and first players and thereafter coaches: Goran Kocic, Lazar Kurtes, Evald Gruber and Svetislav Dimitrijevic.
Along with the achieved successes, equally important for the Association is the increasing interest of people with disabilities in sports and recreational activities, which are implemented with the support of the Ministry of Labour, Employment, Veteran and Social Affairs – Department for the Protection of Persons with Disabilities.
