STORY BY

Rob Cahill

The authors of the English language didn’t do any favors for people with disabilities when they coined a series of stigmatizing terms like “handicap” and “cripple” to describe people with differences in their bodily functions and abilities.

The term “handicap” has been linked to both an Old English bartering game in which the loser was left with his “hand in his cap” and to a person with a disability begging with “cap in hand.” The word “cripple” refers to a lame animal or person.

Deemed offensive, both terms are avoided by most journalists but persist in everyday conversation, which stereotypes the person with a disability as helpless and in need of pity or compassion. “Handicapped” is no longer used in federal legislation.

“Words affect attitudes,” says disability rights pioneer Lex Frieden, who joined the faculty of The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston in 2007. “If people use misinformed language, it perpetuates the negative stereotypes and perceptions about groups of people.”

Frieden’s primary appointment is at The University of Texas School of Health Information Sciences at Houston, where he directs the school’s Laboratory for Adaptive Technologies. He also serves at the Independent Living Research Utilization (ILRU) program at Memorial Hermann | TIRR, Baylor College of Medicine and the UT Medical School at Houston.

“A person is a person regardless of whether he or she has a disability,” Frieden says. “It is preferable to identify someone as a person with a disability rather than as a cripple, an invalid or a handicapped person.” Frieden uses a wheelchair after being injured in a traffic accident while in college.

Half of us to experience disability

There are 54 million Americans with disabilities and the number most likely will increase as a result of life-prolonging therapeutic breakthroughs, the obesity crisis, and especially, the aging of Baby Boomers.  “As of the year 2010, we will see a glut of Baby Boomers hit retirement,” says Frieden. “So, as of January 1, for the next 10 years, 10,000 people a day will hit age 65. Right now, half of all folks over 65 have disabilities,” Frieden says.

A more sobering way to say it: If you’re 30 years old, you have a 1 in 2 chance of experiencing disability three months or more sometime in your life before the age of 65.

Some organizations that raise money to help people with disabilities are to blame for some disability stereotyping. “Pity was used as a strategy to raise funds during telethons,” Frieden says. “It led employers to believe that people with disabilities couldn’t work.”

Frieden and other disability rights advocates are promoting “People First Language”— respectful and accurate terminology for people with disabilities.

Author Kathie Snow has compiled a list of the dos’ and don’ts in an article titled “To ensure Inclusion, Freedom and Respect for all, we must use People First Language,” which is online at http://ftp.disabilityisnatural.com/documents/PFL8.pdf  *

Here are examples.

“A person’s disability is a descriptor just like color might be a descriptor of race,” Frieden says. “Just because a person has vision issues doesn’t mean he or she is blind. Likewise, a person who may be hard of hearing isn’t necessarily deaf.”

The American Medical Association defines disability as “an alteration of an individual’s capacity to meet personal, social or occupational demands because of an impairment.”

War wounds brought shift in attitudes

Injured soldiers from World War II and the Vietnam War played a key role in advancing the rights of people with disabilities, Frieden says. “They didn’t consider themselves invalids or cripples and weren’t about to let someone tell them what they could or couldn’t do.”

Other events influencing a change in attitudes toward people with disabilities in the second half of the 20th century included the independent living movement, the self-advocacy People First movement, self-help initiatives and the Civil Rights Movement.

The disability rights movement led to the passage of the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act. It prohibits discrimination against people with disabilities and guarantees equal opportunities for individuals with disabilities in employment, transportation, public accommodations, state and local government services and telecommunications.

Frieden’s adaptive technologies lab is working on innovative ways to help people with disabilities at work and at home. Projects include the use of personal digital assistants (PDAs) to help people with Alzheimer’s disease remember their daily routines, as well as the development of assistive robots that can be operated with a specially designed exoskeleton and perform tasks such as vacuuming.

And, there’s more to come.

*Copyright 2005-2008 Kathie Snow, used with permission. (Contact kathie@disabilityisnatural.com for permission to reprint.)

Last Updated: 3-28-2008

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