Un-Tabooing Disability - The Cognitive Way
From our creative partner in Gurugram, Haryana just outside of Delhi in India
Disability can’t be understood in isolation. It has two sisters – Impairment and Handicap.
In a world of political correctness and grammar police, it isn’t rare to see people using correct terminology for most concepts. Yet, some concepts, unlike others, need to be better understood.
I often hear people using the terms “Disability” or “Disabled” without a basic understanding of the implications. Such casual conversations bother me. I don’t blame them, we are so bombarded with new terms every few years that it can become difficult to keep up. For example: most of us will have difficulty in choosing among differently abled child, child with special educational needs, child with disability or child with special needs. To a layman, they all look the same. Similarly, is it mental retardation (an old concept), intellectual disability, neuro-variance or neurodivergence? Do they refer to impairment or disability? Or is it a handicap? Recently, terms like ADHD or Autism or learning disability or Dyslexia have captured the attention of the masses to the extent that it has become fashionable to use them.
During a lunch meeting a few days back, I heard a friend label a child with ADHD. Now, this friend had no idea of the gravity that comes with such terms. It was a new fancy term he had heard of. It depicted him as well-informed and in pace with the time. It didn’t matter if it fit the child in perspective. We have become used to quantifying everything under the sun so much so that labelling has become our second nature. I am baffled by such irresponsible behaviour.
It is important to cognitively understand any term before we absorb them into our vocabulary. This article is a first attempt to simplify concepts. Let us begin by conceptually understanding the term ‘Disability’. I will be explaining the term from a medical/ health perspective.
Disability can’t be understood in isolation. It has two sisters – Impairment and Handicap. Let us learn about them together to develop sensitivity and awareness before we use the terms next time.
Any aberration at the tissue level is called impairment. If it’s in the eye, it is called visual impairment, if in the ear- hearing impairment, and so on. Disability is the functional aspect of impairment. Simply put, it means impairment leads to disability.
The term “Disability etymologically originates from ‘Dis-ability’ or ‘lack of ability’ which can be loosely described as having limited ability or inability to perform a task. The degree of disability may vary depending upon the severity of impairment. For example, the disability regarding hearing impairment lies in the functional part of the ear (i.e. the inability to hear or loss of hearing). Similarly, the disability of visual impairment is the inability to see (the functional aspect of vision). The degree of residual vision will further lead to categorization. Let’s keep that for some other day.
Handicap is not being able to participate in social activities, often due to disability. For example: As a child with orthopedic impairment, my disability will be – not being able to walk which becomes a handicap in the playground when I cannot participate with other children while they are playing football. However, in the classroom my disability doesn’t become a handicap as I can participate in the learning process efficiently.
Also, handicap is a social construct that labels and discriminates. It includes the social stigma attached to disability. Disability is just another classification by society like religion, gender, nationality or race; if only we are able to look at it beyond the narrow lens of prejudice, fear and ignorance. But for long it had not been the case.
Another important point to note: Impairment leads to Disability, Disability leads to handicap. Thus, there cannot be any Disability without Impairment but handicap isn’t dependent on disability only. For example, being unable to see, obstructs us from pursuing many social activities, and thus, it becomes a handicap. However, anyone can be handicapped at any time despite having/ or not having any disability. Consider this – I am taking an exam, and suddenly, my pen stops working. Not being able to write an exam due to unavailability of pen becomes a handicap. But the reason is that there isn’t any physical or functional aberration instead it’s my pen not working.
Hope next time you meet a person with disability, you will step forward and connect with him/her as another human. I will suggest try to look at the world from his/her perspective (beyond the social labels) and who knows you might find a friend for life thus, breaking the shackles of predominant ableist culture.
About the Author: Shruti Shankar Gaur holds a Ph.D. in Inclusive Education. Her life changed in 2003, when she opted for Bachelors in Special Education. Until then, she was an out and out science student with a master’s degree in organic chemistry. For the last nineteen years, she has been actively working in the field of special education, inclusive education and socio-cultural inclusion. - Contact the author: https://linktr.ee/dr.shrutishankargaur
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Thank you for this detailed breakdown, Shruti.
In addition to understanding the terminology around disability, your article made me reflect on how words are so interesting. There are times when we might not feel the need to be overly particular about the specific words used in a situation, as long as the overall idea or general message comes across. But there are other times when precise wording is of the utmost importance, in order to ensure precision of meaning with no ambiguity.
Thank you Shruti for your informative article. Given that we are just 2 days away from ADHD awareness month, it is also extremely timely. I've always found it somewhat ironic that out of all the positive terms that could have been chosen by the medical establishment, Attention "Deficit" Hyperactivity "Disorder" was the one they went with. Thank you, you are so correct. Not only should we make the effort to better understand terms before we use them, we should also consider the impact or stigma that might be created around the ones we coin.
As someone diagnosed in 1968 as Hyperactive (ADHD in today's terms), I have often heard the term disability used to describe those with the condition. ADHD people are neurodiverse, meaning that their brains work differently. Although they have different learning abilities which can make it difficult for them to function in a neurotypical world, they often have many strengths which if supported allow them to flourish in certain environments. These can include: fast-paced jobs like firefighting, structured careers like engineers, creative professions like musicians, designers or marketers, and care-giver roles such as doctors, teachers or counsellors. Far from necessarily being a "deficit or disorder," ADHD can be a benefit. When a supportive learning environment and a variety of teaching methods are utilized to accommodate their different learning styles, those with ADHD don't only flourish, their unique and varied ways of approaching things can become a superpower. Thank you Shruti for pointing out the importance of using appropriate terminology, and your implication as to its impact when we get it wrong.