A suggestion for how to talk about disability

At the Paralympics, people who have different use or partial use of their limbs are able to compete on equal terms because somebody has come up with a system of broad categories. This clip of the s6 backstroke final shows the variety of techniques that achieve the same purpose.

The phrase ‘differently-abled’ has been suggested to replace the term ‘disabled’, because many people with disabilities have above-and-beyond capabilities as a result of training or persistence or lifelong practice. 

But while this term recognises the physical excellence of Paralympians it is inappropriate to apply it to, say, the elderly, whose abilities are inevitably in constant decline. It is a polite fiction to use ‘differently’ for ‘less’, and everyone knows it.

What is true is that to whatever extent someone is incapacitated they are also adaptive. The adjusted equipment used by disabled bodies in sports is already described as adaptive, and the word could equally represent the people who use modifications of the normal process to carry out everyday tasks.

Adaptive’ is accurate and forward-thinking. It envisages the successful negotiation of daily life, and so it envisages the appropriate facilities. It applies to everyone from medal winning Paralympic athletes to a quadriplegic person spelling out words with an eyelid. Living with a disability will mean that someone can’t hear or can’t walk but in practice they communicate by sign language or go about their daily business with the use of a prosthetic leg or a wheelchair. The word ‘adaptive’ does not deny the real obstacles a person with a disability can face in their daily life, but it recognises how people can and do perform many of the tasks and activities that the mainstream does. And it keeps everyone alert to what someone could do if the facilities were there, and so why aren’t they?