Providing information, education, and training to build knowledge, develop skills, and change attitudes that will lead to increased independence, productivity, self determination, integration and inclusion (IPSII) for people with developmental disabilities and their families.

Media Forum

17. Emphasis on Disabilities

[Audience Member] I want to get back to the issue of why it's not a matter of political correctness – people-first language – and why it's important.

What the theoretical underpinnings for it are, so we can be reminded of that.

I mean, I get why an editor is going to want to do a shorter headline.

But what I do think is when we… when we take those short cuts, we lose an opportunity to educate the broader public for people who just look at the headline, and that is that whenever we emphasize it's a disability, a disabled person instead of a person with a disability, what you're doing is you're saying they're the Other.

Not meaning to be bad. I get it.

But it's… it's a lost opportunity, because when we have these people be the Other, then they're over there, and us normal people are over here.

And that's what I think is the danger of it.

So I want to keep that in mind and just… and realize that it's always an opportunity to make people be people first and be… and have a chance to realize for the public that we're all in this together.

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The GCDD is funded under the provisions of P.L. 106-402. The federal law also provides funding to the Minnesota Disability Law Center, the state Protection and Advocacy System, and to the Institute on Community Integration, the state University Center for Excellence. The Minnesota network of programs works to increase the IPSII of people with developmental disabilities and families into community life.

This project was supported, in part by grant number 2401MNSCDD, from the U.S. Administration for Community Living, Department of Health and Human Services, Washington, D.C. 20201. Grantees undertaking projects with government sponsorship are encouraged to express freely their findings and conclusions. Points of view or opinions do not, therefore, necessarily represent official ACL policy.

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