Examples of inappropriate (not people-first) language regarding people with disabilities
A. Abc news on the story of the world’s dwarf siblings.
B. This is an instance where the media refers to siblings with a short statute as dwarf siblings. The media uses an inappropriate word ‘dwarf’ to refer to these people.
C. Apart from referring to these siblings as ‘dwarfs’, these individuals have got through a lot of challenges; such as having a problem of lifting a bag of sugar in a supermarket and being treated as children by strangers and teachers despite being in their early 20s.
This shows the disadvantages of people of short statute and at the same time some kind of discrimination like when they are treated as children by strangers. This is just one of the instances where we see discrimination against persons with disabilities.
Persons with disabilities are portrayed as people with inability. The media and people who use this source of information fail to understand that a disability is not an inability.
They continuously use incorrect term to refer to those people and even show some kind of discrimination against them. The media refer to people with disability as to persons with special needs, which reveals the inappropriate use of terminologies to refer to them.
Whereas the rights of other groups which experience discrimination like the homosexuals are openly violated, the persons with disabilities are denied their rights to socialize, properly educate and create a movement.
People with disabilities receive more discriminatory remarks in the press simply because people who use the press are not well informed on the proper (appropriate) language that should be used to refer to persons with disabilities. People without disabilities recognize the ones with disabilities as abnormal hence they see them differently without realizing that disability is something that can happen to anyone at anytime.
People should be educated on how to use correct words to refer to persons with different disabilities.
The media is the most appropriate tool that should be used by individuals or organizations that deal with persons with disabilities to educate and inform other people in society on how to refer to them so as not to discriminate or hurt them. Such actions must be done as quickly as possible.