There's an FCC exemption in place for members of the US Hang Gliding and Paragliding Association. This allows paragliders to use designated frequencies without an FCC license. I fly paragliders with a Yaesu FT-270 and it works just as well as my aviation handheld. Overall, my experience has been that HAM radios work very well with the paragliding community, and they rarely have any need to communicate with GA traffic.

Paragliding is budget-oriented and radio use would be far less common if they had to shell out $200-$300 for aviation handheld radios. Thanks to the availability of affordable HAM radios ($30 BaoFeng radios are super popular), nearly all paragliders are radio equipped.

In practice, paragliders often trample on non-approved frequencies and exhibit poor radio ettiquette. That's always going to be the case unless we eliminate Part 103 and require them to become private pilots. Overall, it's probably a very good thing that paragliders aren't communicating on GA frequencies.