Words with Dignity
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By using words with dignity, we encourage equality for everyone.
| Words with Dignity | Avoid these words |
|---|---|
| person with a disability, disabled | Cripple, handicapped, handicap, invalid (literally invalid means "not valid") |
| Person who has, person with (e.g. person who has cerebral palsy) | Victim, afflicted with (e.g. victim of cerebral palsy) |
| uses a wheelchair | restricted, confined to a wheelchair, wheelchair bound (the chair enables mobility, without the chair, the person is confined to bed) |
| non-disabled | normal (referring to non-disabled persons as "normal" insinuates that people with disabilities are abnormal) |
| deaf, does not voice for themselves, nonvocal | deaf mute, deaf and dumb |
| disabled since birth, born with | birth defect |
| psychiatric history, psychiatric disability, emotional disorder, mental illness | crazy, insane, lunatic, mental patient, wacko |
| epilepsy, seizures | fits |
| learning disability, mental retardation, developmental delay, ADD/ADHD | slow, retarded, lazy, stupid, underachiever |
Other terms which should be avoided because they have negative connotations and tend to evoke pity and fear include:
- abnormal
- burden
- condition
- deformed
- differently abled
- disfigured
- handi-capable
- incapacitated
- imbecile
- manic
- maimed
- madman
- moron
- palsied
- pathetic
- physically challenged
- pitiful
- poor
- spastic
- stricken with
- suffer
- tragedy
- unfortunate
- victim
Preferred Terminology
- Blind (no visual capability)
- Legally blind, low vision (some visual capability)
- Hearing loss, hard of hearing (some hearing capability)
- Hemiplegia (paralysis of one side of the body)
- Paraplegia (loss of function in the lower body only)
- Quadriplegia (paralysis of both arms and legs)
- Residual limb (post-amputation of a limb)
