If you Google ‘disability’ you won’t find the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) returned. The EHRC was set up two yeards ago to replace the three commissions against discrimination on the grounds of Race, Sex and Disability. Fears were expressed that subsuming independent groups with individual specialists into one overarching commission would not be in the best interests of the people they represented; that their strengths and identities would be diluted. I would have expected the meta data on the EHRC’s website to match a Google search on the word disability but it doesn’t bring it up. I would be the first to support a change in language and a move away from the word ‘disability’, substituting it with ‘difference’ instead. Looks like the EHRC are far ahead of me here. No, that’s odd. The word ‘difference’ doesn’t return the EHRC either.
Equality and Human Rights Commission
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SEO issues aside, I wouldn’t substitute ‘disability’ for ‘difference’ because they don’t mean the same thing.
The difference between someone who’s blind and someone who isn’t is that one has a disability, and the other doesn’t.
The problem with trying to shape-shift words in this way is that, however noble the intention, the process is Orwellian, and you find yourself creating a variant of Newspeak.
The best cure? Politics and the English Language, followed by a good dose of the Economist Style Guide.
People with vision impairment have different ways of coping; this makes them different not disabled. Perceived reality is defined through a language code based on agreed consensus of meaning. Disability is a word with social and cultural attributions of deficit. This negativity should be challenged. I’m not shape-shifting; I’m suggesting a change in perception – for the better and for not the worse.