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Disability Resource Center

Language and Disability

Language and Disability

Many people still view persons with disabilities as individuals to be pitied, feared, or ignored. The attitudes may arise from discomfort with individuals who are perceived to be different or simply from a lack of information.

Positive language empowers.  Following are examples of affirmative and negative phrases.

Affirmative Phrases Negative Phrases
Person with a psychiatric disability crazy, nuts
Person with mental retardation, person with a developmental disability retarded, mentally defective
   
Person with a disability handicapped
Person who is deaf, person who is hard of hearing suffers from hearing loss, deaf and dumb, deaf-mute
Person who has multiple sclerosis afflicted by MS, victim of, stricken by
Person with epilepsy, person with a seizure disorder epileptic
Person who uses a wheelchair confined or restricted to a wheelchair, wheelchair bound
Person with a physical disability crippled, lame, deformed
Does not use speech, uses synthetic speech dumb, mute
Seizure fit
Successful, productive has overcome his/her disability
Says he/she has a disability admits he/she has a disability
Person without a disability normal person (implies that the person with a disability isn’t normal)

Source: The President’s Committee on Employment of People with Disabilities, adapted

Updated 8.17.2007