Disability is often more of a civil rights matter than a medical one. It is an issue of semantics, also – language both reflects and influences how people think, and how they react to situations, and to other individuals.
The traditional view of disability locates the ‘problem’ with the individual, and asserts that it is the disabled person’s medical condition that is the root cause of their exclusion from society.
This is the ‘Medical Model’ of disability. It confuses disability with illness, and looks for medical solutions – potential cures or treatments, or the eradication of the ‘problem’ by other means, such as pre-natal screening, and termination of foetuses found to have certain congenital conditions – rather than societal change to make life better for those with impairments/disabilities.
Much of the terminology it uses is patriarchal in nature, implying that disabled people need to be looked after, and to have things done for them and to them: and in so doing it denies them empowerment.
This in turn leads to misinformed and inappropriate attitudes in society generally, to social exclusion, a clichéd and negative media image, inadequate legislation and social policies, and inaccessible buildings.
In a society so heavily influenced by the media, the press can have an enormous impact on society’s knowledge and attitudes, and on public policies regarding individuals with impairments.
Yet, despite more than forty years of disability civil rights activism, and the opposing calls for the use of Person-First language or the Identity-First language preferred by the civil rights movement, many journalists writing in the mainstream press continue to use the dehumanising, disenfranchising and paternalistic terminology of the Medical Model.
By employing more positively-nuanced language and terminology, that references disability in terms of society rather than the individual, and by rejecting and challenging phrases that dehumanise and devalue, then it is possible, that we may be able to effect change in the way society perceives people who have impairments, we may also cause the traditional press to re-evaluate their presentation of such issues also.
Potentially this could lead to the perpetuation of a positive image of disability and impairment, but as with all social change, if it happens it will be a protracted process.