Member-only story

Writing about disability? A style guide can help

JoLynne Martinez
UX Collective
Published in
3 min readOct 1, 2021
Notepad with the following phrases written on it: disabled person, differently-abled person, handicapped person, handicapable person, person with a disability. All phrases except person with a disability are crossed out.
Image Credit: Photo by STIL on Unsplash | Editing & photo manipulation by JoLynne Martinez

I am a deaf person.

I am a Deaf person.

I am a person who is deaf.

Which of those statements is written correctly? If you’re talking about the mechanics of writing (grammar, spelling and punctuation), all three sentences are correct. However, if you’re talking about style, then the answer to that question isn’t so easy to answer.

Various style guides serve various purposes. People studying psychology or education, for example, are usually required to write formal papers in conformance with the American Psychological Association’s manual. Journalists in the United States usually use The Associated Press style book. Many companies and other organizations have their own in-house style.

When it comes to guidance for the language used in writing about people with disabilities (as in the sentences I used to open this article), one solid resource is the Disability Language Style Guide maintained by the National Center on Disability and Journalism at Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication. They released an updated version just last summer.

According to that guide, people like me who have some hearing may prefer to be referred to as deaf with a lowercase “d.” People who cannot hear at all may…

--

--

Written by JoLynne Martinez

One of the top 50 design writers here on Medium. Specializing in coverage of digital accessibility. https://jolynnemartinez.github.io/

Responses (1)

Write a response