Talk:Disability

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İNTERWİKİ please ! :(


This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Disability article.

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[edit] Old talk

Here is a partial list of disabilities, probably not as conceptually well-organized as it could be. We invite knowledgeable people to put this page in order!

Hello, may I ask as politely as possible where you get your knowledge base on disabilities to say that this list is not conceptually well-organized? These are the major sections of disabilities. Did you want me to put further explanation after each term so that it would sound educated to your uneducated mind on this subject? So if you say this is not well-organized, but that you don't know and need someone mor knowledgeable, how did you know it is not well-organized? This seems nonsensical to me. This brings up another important and general question. How do the people of this Wiki jukge if something is scholarly or not, if you are not scholoars on everything? You must just look at it and think if it sounds good according to some loose and uneducated idea of waht "sounds" educated. Is this pride? I don't know, maybe you know something I don't, but then agon, how in that case, how would you know it was not well organized, and thus asked for someone knowledgeable on the subject. Interesting. How do you know it is not in order already? I wish I could give you my email address.

Comments about a page, especially when they get very lengthy, are put on "talk" pages like this page.----

You seem to be new to Wikipedia. Well, anyone can add anything they want to any page, and others can feel free to change it (or change it back!). I suggest you read the welcome page and follow the links. If you want to spend very much time on Wikipedia, you'd better get used to other people editing what you do. This requires thick skin.

The list didn't make any sense to me as a list of disabilities--that's all. That was just my own opinion. I don't know "the people of this Wiki" judge the scholarliness of anything; that's up to each of them individually.

--Larry Sanger

Q on disabilities: How do you place into the existing different categories self induced ones such as alcoholism (recognized by ADA)?---- Under Substance Abuse...:-). I believe this is only recognized as a disability "protected fully by the ADA," if the substance abuser is in treatment. The ADA defines "a disabiltiy as anything that interferes with one or more functions of every day living." Therefore, perceived disabilities, are counted too, like skin that is marked with many visisble large "strawberry" birthmarks. Can check on alcoholism...

I suppose a recalcitrant spouse could be a disability, then... (ducking)---- So could Wikipedia addiction...(running for his/her life)----.

I took my definition from US Law, the ADA. Where did you ever get this one? The ADA is vague. Your definition has no meaning to me. And this real or imagined disability is imagined by whom, may I ask. Please give a source for your definition. As for your 2 main categories, do you really think there is a big difference between a baby born blind and one who becomes so at a week old? RoseParks

I meant to use 'physical and mental' instead of 'real and imagined'. That might have sidetracked you.

I am still asking for the source of your definition. The ADA definition: A "disabled person" is one who can not perform one or more of the activities of daily living" is vague enough. Yours, "a disability is some physical or mental limitation which prevents full utilization of a person's ability/functionality." strikes me as meaningless. A person's ability to do what? Further, some disabilities are both physical and mental or this distinction can not be made at this point. There is an entire school of psychiatry that would claim that many of the conditions that have been called mental, like "depression," are actually chemical imbalances in the brain. This is supported to a certain extent by the fact that medications that restore certain chemical imbalances in the brain, do return patients to a state of mental health. Example: All those new antidepressants one hears about in the Media, are SSRI's, that is selective seritonin reuptake inhibitors and serve to bring the level of seritonin, a neurotransmitter, to a normal levels, in a patient using them. This gives some credence to the hypothesis that atleast some mental disorders are, in fact, physical impairments. The Courts, in enforcing the ADA, and the Justice Department primarily, in setting guidelines based on the ADA, have separated them, simply because, physical disabilities require different accomodations from "mental" ones. A person in a wheelchair, to be able to work, for instance, needs a workplace with wider doorways, aisles and turn space, air-pressure doors, lower shelves, possibly assistive equipment, etc. A person who is obssesive-compulsive, may need frequent breaks at work, to say, wash their hands or comb their hair, repeatedly.

The definition is my own and not from any dictionary or other reference work.---- Then if you don't mind I will replace it with a recognized one. RoseParks.

Alternate Scheme:

Behavioral disability
Blindness
Chronic disability
Communicative disability
Deafness
Developmental disability
Learning disability
Mental disability
Multiple disability
Temporary disability

Can someone expand on how disabilities are treated differently in different cultures/countries?---- Do you really want to hear in how many countries they are simply killed or abandoned as children?

Of course we do! What could possibly be a better use of an encyclopedia than to shed the harsh light of reality upon the practices of people across the planet so that they can be compared and hopefully changed where needed? --LDC

as a disabled person (CP) this page says alot about things - i just wish people that i meet would A) not say "spastic" to me and B) not talk slow to me as if i am mentally disabled as well as physically disabled.

-- Paul Melville Austin

This entire article needs a rewrite, probably under "Disability" rather than "Disabilities". A broad definition rather than a list of medical conditions would be a good start, as well as the social model of disability (http://www.daa.org.uk/text/Social%20Model%20or%20Unsociable%20Muddle%20text.htm ), and the distinction between a disability and an impairment -- Tarquin

I work near a school or training center for the blind. Sometimes, I ask a cane-carrying blind person if they would like help. Most of the time, they accept.

How can I reconcile my offer to help (and their frequent ready acceptance) with the "etiquette guideline" advocated in the article? Are they accepting only to be polite (despite my rudeness for offering)? Is it a special case, since I'm near a school and they are more likely to actually need help? Am I miscalculating the proportion of accepters (maybe more say no than i remember)?

I've had numerous encounters wherein the persons I helped seemed genuinely grateful for my offers. Once in Penn Station I carried some bags for a blind couple. They said I was much more polite and helpful than the conductors.

I daresay I'm pretty good at offering help (and taking no for an answer). Absent a really good reason to stop offering help to people who seem to need it, I'm going to keep walking up to blind people and saying, "Hi! Would you like some help?"

-- Ed Poor, Tuesday, June 11, 2002

however, the social exclusion they may experience (lack of accessible transport, no adapted public toilets, buildings which are innaccessible) is caused by their environment, not their physical condition.

That is odd, it is due to the combination. If it has nothing to do with disability we are talking about social exclusion of everybody, and it does not belong in this article. - Patrick 13:05 18 Jun 2003 (UTC)

disability is a social exclusion. Might need to NPOV it, but disability campaigners would say that the problem a wheelchair user has in entering a building is entirely the fault of the building. Saying it's also because they can't walk would be "normalization" -- saying that there is something 'bad' or 'wrong' about an impairment, and that walking is the 'correct' way to be -- Tarquin 13:17 18 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I'm fixing the NPOV changes made to this article, among other things. --Kael 01:16, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)

May I interject that this article's treament of the diverse views of disability is greatly appreciated, particularly in light of it's discussion of deaf people and their culture, a culture I wholeheartly embrace. The Deaf article is currently under the supervision of a mediator because of some edits that are almost too hidious to describe. Once the mediator has been appointed, it would be my great pleasure to invite the contributors to this "disability" subject to join in on the improvement of the deaf article. It's a total mess right now and a notice has been posted asking people not to edit the page. It may have to be torn down to its foundation and reconstructed. I am diligently working to put the "deaf" house in order. I thank you for your efforts here. To read this page has made my day. :-) Ray Foster 22:48, 26 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Ableism

Greetings. Ableism redirects to this topic, yet there doesn't seem to be anything much written here about it. I think there should be, or else it should be a topic of it's own, as it is a very serious - yet not often talked about - form of discrimination. Thoughts? --Mista-X 01:24, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

what about a section on disabled history We need one. questons like how did we get to this postition?, do we have a history? need to be answerd James cullis

[edit] Person First Movement

When I google this phrase, I don't get much aside from Wikipedia mirrors. Are there any citations for this term? If those exact words aren't usually used, it shouldn't be capitalized, at least. CDC (talk) 22:10, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

Look at this website. It is common among Down syndrome advocacy groups: [[1]]

[edit] Compound Disabilities

I was looking at this article and was wondering if there exists a term for or formal distinction between people with multiple or compound disabilities and people that have a dominant disability. -- Joseph Lorenzo Hall 19:08, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] What is disability? What is "disabled"? Why the debate?

"Disability" and "disabled" are terms that are undergoing change due to the disability rights movement both in the U.S. and U.K. To a lesser extent this is occurring worldwide, but I can only speak for the U.S. and to a lesser extent the U.K.

Conventional definitions of "disabled" and "disability" stem from social service programs and benefits programs such as Social Security. These definitions, dating back many years (right now I don't have time to look this up -- see Deborah Stone's book 'The Disabled State' for more on this) uniformly used the term "disabled" or "disability" to mean "unable" -- to work, to handle gainful employment, etc. If you look up definitions of "disabled" you'll find these kinds of definitions.

To most people today the term "disabled" still means that, and, more broadly, means "unable to perform" this or that physical or mental function.

Even more broadly, a large group of physical or mental conditions are considered to be "disabilities" -- things people have also called "afflictions" or "impairments" or "injuries" or "diseases." The language here is not precise, so please do not quibble with it at this point. We are trying to get to a larger understanding, so let's move on:

Beginning in the 1970s, people labeled as 'disabled' (either because they fell under the Social Security definition or because they had some sort of injury or condition considered a "disability") began seeking changes in society that would allow them to have a better life. Since the 1980s, this effort has generally been termed "disability rights" advocacy or "disability rights activism." The term is "disability rights" -- not "disabled rights" or "handicapped rights" simply because historically and politically that's the term that the activists themselves have come to call it.

So the correct term is "disability rights."

Back to "disabled":

Another term that grew in popularity during the first part of the 20th Century was "handicapped." The conventional wisdom has it that this was a term first used by the social service field; it's intent was to focus on social conditions: to say that an individual was "handicapped" by such and such -- by paralysis, by being kept out of buildings, whatever. (It is not true, as some have said, that the term comes from "cap in hand." See snopes.com for a good discussion of this.) The term comes from sports: handicapping mean assigned some extra burden or weight.

Back to the birth of today's disability rights movement: budding activists did not like having been 'defined" by the social service system basically rebelled against the term "handicapped" SIMPLY BECAUSE IT HAD BEEN ASSIGNED TO THEM BY OTHERS -- and, in choosing a new term, chose "disabled." Anecdote has it that Judy Heumann led the change, arguing that "others handicap us but we are disabled people" -- this is in no way an exact quote but it carries the flavor of Heumann's thinking.

So, activists in the U.S began using "disabled." As in "disabled person."

Then a movement came along to change the wording to "people first language" -- so, it was argued, use the term "people with disabilities."

Britain's disability rights theorists and disability studies leaders reject that, and stick with "disabled person." Currently in the U.S. activists seem divided.

This is a very very brief overview. I will try to add more and flesh this out in coming weeks.

We must keep in mind in all of this that the disability rights movement and its thinking is almost unknown outside the movement itself, thus, the debate on wikipedia over this entry. I will provide some links as well to read more about this.

Many people still use "handicapped" or "crippled" or "afflicted." None of these terms is looked upon with favor by anyone in the organized U.S. or U.K. disability rights movement. "Handicapped" is truly detested in U.K. circles.

Hope this brief intro helps.

[edit] NPOV?

OK, so the title of this article is disability, but it doesn't actually really discuss what disability actually is. Instead, it seems very concerned with political correctness: what is disability? How should we refer to a person who is disabled, or to a person who is not disabled? These are worthwhile questions and should certainly be part of an article on this topic, but they shouldn't constitute the entirety of the article, and the article shouldn't attempt to dictate the "right" answers.

For a good contrast, compare African American. Unlike the present article, this article clearly states that African American is a term used to describe a particular group of people. It then describes the group, the origin of the term, the development in usage of the term over a period of time, and so on. Also unlike the present article, it doesn't attempt to say what the "right" way to use the term is, or what the "right" term is to describe a particular group of people. Instead, it simply describes, in a neutral and factual way, the history and contemporary usage of the term. rhaas 23:27, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] etymology of the word disabeld

Can soneone help me on this? I need to find out about the history of the word "disabled". Questions like when has the word appeared for the first time? Who used it the first time? My mothertongue is German, I know about the word history of the German word "behindert", but I would find it intressting how it is in other languages. Thank you for your help


I think it might be a good idea to look for the etymologies for the words "Asthmatic", "Asthma", "Disease" and "Disability", "Disabilities" and the euphemism for the Disabled, "Differently-abled" at the same time. I expect the same processes could be used to find all six. 87.194.35.230 16:44, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] copyright violation

The defining disablities was extended with a cut an past verison from http://www.parks.ca.gov/pages/735/files/avw-02-types%20of%20disabilities.pdf. that document has no GFDL message and it i suspected it does not have a proper copyright. reverted to a version of 30 oct. 2006 :Leuk he 14:00, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Merge

I noticed the Disability and Disabilities pages are marked as suggested for merging, I couldn't see a discussion already maybe I've missed it. Could they be merged? I would suppose, personally, via using the singular form as the page title, in the standard way I think? This could be introduced as "A Disability is..." rather than "Disability is..." if the latter more generalized concept is disliked by some as opposed to a more 'atomized' concept? (is that why there's currently two pages?). That distinction would still be addressed within the page of course. EverSince 11:43, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

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