Posts by Sacha
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Access: Words and Disability - The…, in reply to Hilary Stace,
live with autism
urg, I shudder at 'living with disability'
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Access: Who Are Disabled New Zealanders?, in reply to BDB Inc,
the lack of understanding happens when the “disabled ” is placed before the person
Jonathan wrote a post you might like.
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Access: Words and Disability - The…, in reply to Russell Brown,
It’s not a a disease, it’s who my sons are and and how they experience the world and I always say someone “is Asperger” or “is on the autism spectrum”.
I quite like "is an aspie" - just to prove I can be inconsistent with the best of em.
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Damn you for posting about one of my favourite topics on a school day, sir. :)
My understanding is that ’people-first’ language came to NZ via the US which has a more medicalised understanding of disability. Parents there reacted against medical professionals describing their disabled children solely by what they saw as dehumanising impairment labels like blind or spastic or handicapped. They wanted to remind everyone that their child was a person first.
However, they only went halfway and the labels they kept resulted in some of the clumsy wording, and an ongoing focus on impairment as the only important identifier.
A couple of influential parent advocates visited NZ in the early 90s I think it was, and the notion took root here. Failure of thought leadership after our 2001 NZ Disability Strategy has seen us veer back towards it in the wake of the US-influenced wording in the UN Convention. We’ve even had people unthinkingly echoing the legalistic “persons” rather than “people”.
I quite liked ‘people experiencing disability’ because if you see disability as a social process then that’s exactly what’s happening.
However the main thing is reaching people where their understanding is at now. That’s why I go for the simplest option and use ‘disabled people’. If impairment is actually relevant (because sometimes it isn’t) then I prefer constructions like ‘people with impaired <function>’. Keeps policy folk focused, and the people-firsters* happy. :)
* not to be confused with members of the People First disabled people’s organisation.
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Hard News: Illegal Highs, in reply to Russell Brown,
As was often the case in the 90s, neoliberal separation of policy and delivery creates gaps in understanding that cause harm.
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Hard News: Illegal Highs, in reply to BenWilson,
Most night in A&Es they’re treating people
MoH are more of a policy unit these days. Don’t do any service delivery like the District Health Board hospitals.
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Access: Who Are Disabled New Zealanders?, in reply to BDB Inc,
Anyone can easily become disabled at any time; a crucial difference from most other types of difference like ethnicity or gender.
Makes it (scarily) easy to imagine a different life for myself - but usually only compared with my current one. With respect, there's a big difference between the experience of being blind and of closing my eyes for a short time knowing that I can open them any time I like.
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Access: Who Are Disabled New Zealanders?, in reply to Hilary Stace,
the DPOs seem focussed on the Convention
Wellington is generally more focused on the United Nations disability human rights convention. National disabled organisations tend to be based there.
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Access: Who Are Disabled New Zealanders?, in reply to BDB Inc,
uncomfortable
a crucial word, yes
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Hard News: Illegal Highs, in reply to Shulgin,
respec
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