In reply to andyathome:
> But one of the issues dealt with in the article is just how you can possibly compare the performance of someone with Aspergers with an amputee. That is so hard.
You don't have to, though, at least in the competition context.
Paraclimbing has different categories -- so, visually-impaired climbers, people with missing upper limbs, people with missing lower limbs, people with "neurological physical disabilities" (e.g. spinal cord injuries), etc. all compete against people with similar kinds of disabilities.
(There generally isn't an autistic spectrum category in international comps, I believe, though there's one in the British paraclimbing series.)
And obviously because disabilities vary in severity, there's often a points multiplier to try to reflect that, and/or categories get divided into two or more sub-groups by severity of impairment.
It's inevitably somewhat inexact and approximate at best, but the basic idea's there.