• Science

    Person-first and identity-first language: Is there a right answer?

    I was on Facebook the other day when I came across an infographic shared by an acquaintance of mine. It purported to list the correct language to use when referring to people with various kinds of disabilities: “person with a disability” instead of “disabled person,” “person with autism” instead of “autistic person,” and so on. If you clicked on the picture, though, you would see that some of the top comments were informing the makers of the infographic that many disabled people actually prefer the opposite. So what’s behind this divide? And what’s “right”? This is the person-first versus identity-first language debate, and unfortunately, it’s not a simple issue to…