Language is powerful and the words we use make a difference. That’s why we need to be careful to examine the words we use when we talk about disability and people with disabilities.
Tag Archives: Equality
BREAKING FREEDOM — THE AIRLINE BROKE HER WHEELCHAIR [AND THOUSANDS MORE]
If once is an accident, twice is a coincidence, and three times is a pattern, what do we say after the 15,000th time? It’s high time many airline companies answer that question, especially in regards to the countless wheelchairs and mobility scooters that have been broken, damaged, lost or stolen on their watch.
ARE YOU ABLEIST? LET’S FIND OUT
Ableism in its simplest form, is discrimination toward disabled people. But it encompasses so much more than what you might assume.
YOU ARE NOT ENTITLED TO DISABLED PEOPLE’S MEDICAL INFORMATION
People are curious about what they don’t know. I get it. I’m curious to know what a wooly mammoth feels like, and how people can read my emotions so accurately just by the way I move my face. [How does one raised eyebrow say so much?]
ASKING “WHAT WOULD YOUR LIFE BE LIKE IF YOU WEREN’T DISABLED” ISN’T BEING CURIOUS, IT’S ABLEIST
It’s always puzzled me, when watching interviews with artists and musicians who’ve made it big in the industry, that almost without fail, the interviewer asks a question along the lines of, “What would you do if you hadn’t pursued music?”
DISABILITY IS ABOUT PEOPLE, NOT POLITICS
My high school history teacher said there would come a time that I’d need to understand politics. And although I know bits and pieces of governmental bodies and systems, I can’t participate in dinner table discussions or understand news articles in a way I always hoped to. I want to learn more.
THE A-E-I-O-U’S OF ACCESSIBILITY — Y IS FOR YES!
It’s here at last, the final instalment in the series, The A-E-I-O-U’s of Accessibility! It’s bittersweet reaching this point, but more than a sadness at seeing this series come to an end, I’m excited to see where we take it going forward in our lives.
THE A-E-I-O-U’S OF ACCESSIBILITY — U IS FOR UNITE
Welcome back to The A-E-I-O-U’s of Accessibility, with our fifth post, U Is For Unite. Unity is a word that I thought existed purely within the church. Growing up in a Christian household, I heard verses like Colossians 3:14: “And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony,” I Corinthians