People First

People First

            I read an article on the Disability Is Natural website called To Ensure Inclusion, Freedom and Respect for All it’s time to embrace People First Language by Kathy Snow.  Snow discusses the origins of such words as disability and handicapped.  She also explains how words matter and how changes in language have helped with civil rights movements such as the women’s rights movement.  Snow uses casual language to discuss a very serious subject.

“—A New Paradigm—
’Disability is a natural Part of the human Experience...’U.S. Developmental Disabilities/Bill of Rights Act

Like gender, ethnicity, and other traits, a disability is simply one of many natural characteristics of being human. Are you defined by your gender, ethnicity, religion, age, sexual orientation, or other trait? No! So how can we define others by a characteristic that is known as a ‘disability’?”

            I support the people first concept and the way it helps us change the world by changing our language.  Changing our language will also help as the baby boomers age and potentially become people with disabilities, however it is one of those “Universal” changes that helps everyone.  The challenge we Project ALFA Fellows have is bringing people first language with us and seeding society with it.  A handy way I have done it is when ever I say something like “she is a deaf woman I work with” I stop myself and say, “…excuse, me, I meant to say I work with a woman who is deaf…” the listener inevitably asks me why I corrected myself and I can explain the people fist concept.  This has spread through the people I know and I like to imagine that it has spread geometrically from them.

            Technology could help us in the transition to people first language.  I have an example from a recent magazine.  I am in TOPS.  It is a club called Taking Off Pounds Sensibly.  TOPS started in 1943 and much of the language and methods from that time remain. Over the past few years there have been some efforts to update the language.  In a recent issue the member magazine featured a chapter that has only one member who is sighted.  One of the members who is blind explained the concept of people first:  “Bonita Howe responded by saying, ‘the members we have in our chapter are not visually impaired, they are blind.’ I explained that I didn’t want to offend anyone, which spurred her to add, ‘Never say ‘the blind person, Bonita’; instead say ‘Bonita, the person who is blind.’ ‘Never put the word ‘blind’ before the person.’ “  On the next page of the magazine the head line reads “TOPS publications available for the print disabled” The article is peppered with “blind students”, “the visually impaired”, “hundreds of blind and visually impaired individuals”.  The challenge is to get grammar checkers to check for the error and other technology to identify the form of the people first concept and correct for it.  If we could get Teachers to teach people first language, and have editors and grammar checkers checking for the form then our society could use language to help bring attention to the entity first and then its attributes.  The dehumanization of people who are disabled through language could be turned around with the help of technology.

            Snow concludes her article with a list of examples of the way we may by used to talking and makes suggestions for changing our language.  Snow writes, “Isn’t it time to make this change? If not now, when? If not you, who? Using People First Language is the right thing to do, so let’s do it!”  Let’s do it, indeed.

REFERENCES

Crane, C. (2012, Apr. - May.). Trailblazers for TOPS. Tops news, 64, no. 3, 6-7.

People First Language. (n.d.). Your #1 source for people first language and new ways of thinking. Retrieved March 3, 2012, from http://www.disabilityisnatural.com/explore/pfl

Snow, K. (n.d.). To ensure inclusion, freedom and respect for all it’s time to embrace people first language. Disability is Natural, Retrieved March 3, 2012, from http://www.disabilityisnatural.com/images/PDF/pfl09.pdf, 2.

TOPS publications available for the print disabled. (2012, Apr. - May.). Tops News, 64, no. 3, 8.