POWERED UP - AN INSIGHT BY THE IN GROUP
So, who is disabled?
You are disabled, according to the Equality Act 2010, if you have a physical or mental impairment that has a substantial and long-term adverse effect on your ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities. Substantial is more than minor or trivial, and long-term means 12 months or more. There are various glossaries and guides which tell you which words to use and which not to use. There is generally a consensus about the words not to use. Yet even within the disabled community, there are differences of opinion. Two main approaches steer this conversation: the Person First approach and the Social Model. The Person First approach says that a disability is something a person has, rather than defining them as that condition. It is the person who comes before the characteristic of being disabled. This means that under the Person First approach, you should use the phrase ‘a person with a disability’ rather than ‘a disabled person.’ On the other hand, the Social Model states that people are disabled by barriers in society, not by their impairment or difference. To remove barriers, it’s attitudes that need to change, in part through the use of language and the way we speak. Using the term ‘a disabled person’ – rather than medical descriptions – is considered by the Social Model to be a positive way of affecting how we see disabled people in society.
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CREDIT - PEXELS
Both these approaches agree that the focus should be on the person and that disability doesn’t define them. What they disagree on is how to do this.
One thing you should not do is tell someone how they should define themselves.
I was once told that I must now call myself deaf and not ‘hearing impaired’ anymore. If you’re referring to the Deaf community, then ‘deaf’ is the appropriate word to use. That said, every deaf person must be free to define themselves in the way that they choose. Some people may not agree with me on this; they may feel that everyone should use the same words so that society will use them too.
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