Fairfax Area Disability Services Board - Awareness & Sensitivity

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Awareness and Sensitivity

Choosing Words with Dignity

People with disabilities, like other protected status groups, are actively seeking full civil rights. They want to be accepted in their communities as equals.

Your portrayal of individuals with disabling conditions can greatly affect the public's perception of their worth. What you write and what you say can enhance the dignity of people with disabilities and promote positive attitudes about their abilities.

Let your descriptive words emphasize the person's worth and abilities, not the disabling condition. Refer to the person first rather than the disability. The phrase "people with disabilities" is preferred, for instance, over "the disabled," which tends to emphasize the disability and creates the image of an unusual and homogeneous group:

Appropriate Terminology	Inappropriate Terminology
Person who is blind, or is visually impaired	The blind
Person who is deaf, or is hearing impaired	Suffers a hearing loss
Person who has multiple sclerosis	Afflicted by MS
Person with cerebral palsy	CP victim
Person affected by muscular dystrophy	Stricken by MD
Person with mental retardation	Retarded; mentally defective
Person with epilepsy, or with seizure disorder	Epileptic
Person who uses a wheelchair	Confined or restricted to a wheelchair
Person without disabilities, non-disabled person	Normal person (implies person with a disability isn't normal)
Unable to speak	non-verbal Dumb, mute
Person with physical disability	Cripple, lame, deformed