Elizabeth Roth climbed a rock wall on Saturday for the first time in a decade.

She experienced a traumatic brain injury nine-and-a-half years ago and now lives with apraxia, a neurological condition. In short, although she wants to move, her brain doesn’t send the correct signals to her body to perform those movements.

But on Saturday, Roth joined nearly 300 participants at the DisAbility Sports Festival in Palm Desert. The crowd worked with volunteers and professional coaches who helped them swim, play tennis, throw javelins and even climb a rock wall with a chair-style harness.

“I get to be up in the air, doing something fun with the body, where normally the body is just pain and immobility,” said Roth, who said she was a yoga instructor before her injury. “You get into this environment where you’re not judged … the atmosphere here is to do (these movements), to encourage people who think they can’t to try it.”

Across Palm Desert’s Civic Center Park on Saturday, people experimented with sports. Some sat low in three-wheeled cycles, pedaling either with their legs or hands. Another group gathered around a quiver of bright plastic javelins, watching an instructor’s arm carefully before imitating her movements.

Getting people to try these sports is the goal of the DisAbility festival, now in its fourth year, explained Judy May who serves as Palm Desert Regional Director at Incight — the nonprofit that organized the festival.

“To climb a rock wall, to get on a bike, that’s freedom they don’t have in most situations,” she said.

May said the event drew more than 270 participants, including people with disabilities and their caretakers and family members, plus 120 volunteers and 30 coaches. In 2012, their first year, she counted just 45 people in total — meaning the event has grown almost tenfold. The nonprofit has also added a skill development program for disabled veterans.

But May highlighted the coaches, who included SoCal Coyotes players and Paralympic athletes. She pointed in particular to Angela Madsen, who has medaled in the Rowing World Championships and in the 2012 London Paralympics, as an example of how sports can empower people with disabilities.

Madsen considered herself an athlete from childhood and played basketball in the Marine Corps. But an injury in the line of duty and her subsequent surgery paralyzed her from the waist down. She spent a few years homeless, trying to learn how to live in a wheelchair.

But then, she said, she discovered wheelchair basketball.

“When you have a catastrophic accident and you can’t do what you did, you’re quick to count the losses,” she said. In contrast, she said, “Sports were just so familiar.”

After a few years of basketball, Madsen shifted her focus to rowing, in which she earned four World Championship gold medals between 2002 and 2008. In 2014, she even rowed with a team from Long Beach to Hawaii.

Now, she’s training for this summer’s games in Rio, focusing on shot put and javelin. She also coaches both rowers and throwers because, she explained, it’s tough for people with disabilities to find trainers who will work with them.

Roth, the rock climber, said that’s exactly what she needed today — the encouragement of a coach.

“It’s not just that (the equipment) is there, but there’s this human element, to discourage or encourage,” Roth said. She gestured at the volunteers clicking another participant into a harness. “They’re also here to coach.”

Incight serves people with disabilities in Portland and Palm Desert. Saturday’s festival was sponsored by Incight, the Desert Recreation District and the City of Palm Desert.