Practical Hacks from the Accessibility Playbook: How to Communicate with and to People with Disabilities

Disability language isn’t one-size-fits-all — learn how to honor individual preferences and communicate with respect.

Part of what makes communicating about disabilities challenging is that people with disabilities are not a homogenous group. A good practice is to ask how someone prefers to describe themselves and, if you inadvertently offend someone with your language, apologize and ask them to share with you their preferred language. There are generally two ways to approach this: person-first or identity-first. Neither is right or wrong; we should simply honor an individual’s preference.

Person-first language: Person-first language emphasizes the person first — their individuality,

their complexity, their humanness and their equality. 

Example: Use “a person with epilepsy” instead of “an epileptic” and “people with disabilities” instead of “the disabled”. 

Identity-first language: Identity-first language emphasizes that the disability plays a role in who the person is and reinforces disability as a positive cultural identifier. 

Example: Use “disabled person” instead of “person with disabilities” and “autistic person” instead of “a person with autism.”