Before I came to Endicott, I didn’t think the word disability had a negative connotation. Growing up working with children with “disabilities”, I never thought twice about saying it. I would never use the term “retarded” but didn’t delve deep into the definitions of “special needs” or “disabilities”. Recently, there was a video circling around social media that featured several individuals with down syndrome. It was a motivational video that brought awareness to the fact that the “needs” of individuals with down syndrome aren’t “special” at all. Individuals with down syndrome want relationships, jobs, success, happiness; everything a “typically developing” person wants. The video goes on to explain how it would be “special” if individuals with down syndrome needed to eat dinosaur eggs, needed to wear a giant suit of armor, needed to be massaged by a cat, or needed to be woken up by a celebrity. Those are “special” needs, individuals with altered abilities have human needs like the rest of us. The definition of disability is categorized by a limitation or a disadvantage, and what do both of those words have in common? Draw back, snag, downside, obstacle, impediment, nuisance, flaw, defect, weakness, fault, and the list of negativities goes on and on. So, why do we use the word “disability” when it holds such a negative connotation for people who are different? A professor of mine, who has a child with autism, always, always, always says “altered ability”. He says that specifically because “dis”, means to speak disrespectfully or criticize. Why would someone ever judge someone else’s ability disrespectfully? So, as a good student does, I’ve followed his lead. Individuals may have altered abilities but not dis-abilities. And the word altered has so many positive synonyms attached to it. Adapt, revamp, refine, adjust, or transform. These words aren’t harmful or negative, they’re different, and individuals with altered abilities work hard to adapt, revamp, refine, adjust and transform themselves to fit in with society, but how about instead, we just accept them the way they are. When you judge someone based on their diagnosis, you miss out on their abilities, beauty and uniqueness.
“There is no greater disability in society, than the inability to see a person as more”
–Robert M. Hensel