The
terminology language used when discussing and addressing disabled people or
used generally to describe disability has an impression on the manner disabled
people are perceived. It is therefore essential that language presents a
positive image, not a negative one, and does not cause felony. The attitude and
tone of address should also be sensitive to the feelings of disabled people-
and correct. Disabled people are no bolder than non-disabled people; neither do
they consider themselves to be victims or fighting against catastrophe.
Terminology
of Disabled-Handicap People:
Patronizing,
sensational, or sentimental words and slogans should be sidestepped. Disabled
people are not self-absorbed and self-pitying and their lives are not nonstop
work. The language that highlights impressions of indifference or dependence
should not be used. A disabled person, like anybody else, will have his/her inclinations
about how he/she would like to be addressed or described, and it is, therefore,
best to ask the individual concerned. For instance, some people may use the
term people with disabilities in preference to disabled people.
Terminology
that is completely insupportable includes:
Handicapped
– this calls up the appearance and image of a submissive person beseeching for
money, the label infers that the individual is to blameworthiness for the
problems he/she meets when it is the environment and society that causes the
handicap.
The
disabled – these protuberances people composed in a group isolated from the
rest of society. It is categorizing according to one aspect of a person, not
conceding that disabled people have Distinctiveness.
An
individual is not a condition – to denote to someone as an arthritic or
paraplegic is Degrading. When referring to a Particular condition use the form
person with.
Convulsive
– this has been used for several years as a term of exploitation and should not
be used as a means of describing people with intellectual, cerebral palsy.
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