October 2022 Special Needs Living Akron/Canton

Professional Perspective

WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT HOW TO SPEAK TO AND ABOUT PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES

Ric Brown, AA, BA, MPA

Ric Brown with Wife Victoria

How you speak to people reflects your behavior, your attitude and your willingness to build or destroy relationships with others. Your words have power; they can be offensive and hurt a person, or they can be complimentary and polite to make a person feel good. The bottom line is your words and the language you use when speaking to others sets the tone for recognizing a person’s humanity.

In the past, people with disabilities were often discriminated against, spoken to harshly and without dignity, they often lived in isolation and/or within segregated communities, and they were often not granted the same respect and recognition as a person first, which led to the identification of a demeaning label or their disability before the genuine person that they were created to be.

To date, our society has gained ground on treating people with disabilities more equally by recognizing that all people should be “people first” in the way that we speak to and about them. Important ideas to remember include mentioning the person with a disability as a person first; the disability is secondary. This person is not a label, not a condition or not a medical term. A peoplefirst self-advocacy movement in the U.S in the 1970s was just one of a growing number of efforts to engage people with disabilities to speak out for their right and freedoms to be known other than as retarded, to be known other than, and labeled as, a medical term or a number of other variants derogatory TERMS and unkind labels.

To that end, advocacy groups and self-advocates with disabilities began building strong cultural awareness, helping to break down barriers and create an effort to treat a person with disabilities the same way one would like to be treated. Accepting differences and welcoming people with disabilities into our circles, into our communities, into our work environments where it was once taboo and into our social lives is a great way to create awareness and break the barriers of isolation and dehumanization that was once prevalent in the lives of people with intellectual and/or developmental disabilities.

The development of people-first language has grown into a formal standard of language that helps all people avoid biases, encourages people with disabilities to take back the definition of “disability” with pride, and helps everyone to avoid the use of terms that are outdated derogatory, demeaning and patronizing to people with disabilities. Examples of people-first language can be found below. This includes, but is not limited to, the following examples:

Use… Uses a wheelchair Deaf, hard of hearing People with disabilities He/she has a cognitive disability He/she receives special education services

Instead of… wheelchair bound hearing impaired the handicapped or disabled He/she is mentally retarded he/she’s special ed

Put the person first in your words before you speak, be nonjudgmental and, most of all, EMPHASIZE ABILITIES! Language and the terms we use to describe people are a reflection of how people see each other. To gain a better understanding of terms and language concepts that support people with disabilities and recognize humanity toward all, the Ohio Developmental Disabilities Council has created free pamphlets and other materials that provide examples of specific language and terms that represent people with disabilities as a person first. These materials may be found at www.ddc.ohio.gov.