A disability is broadly defined as a condition or function judged to be significantly impaired relative to the usual standard of an individual or group. The term is used to refer to individual functioning, including

• physical impairment

• sensory impairment

• cognitive impairment

• intellectual impairment

• mental illness, and 

• various types of chronic disease

Different laws and countries define disability differently. Conventional definitions of disabled and disability stem from social service programs and benefits programs, such as Social Security. These definitions, dating back many years uniformly used the term disabled or disability to mean unable - to work, to handle gainful employment, etc. See The Disabled State by Deborah Stone, 1986

Disability and Disabled are terms that are undergoing change due to the disability rights movement across the world. Yet to most people today, the term disabled still means just that, and, more broadly, means unable to perform this or that physical or mental function. Even more broadly, a large group of physical or mental conditions are considered to be disabilities - things people have also called afflictions or impairments or injuries or diseases.

Beginning in the 1970s, people labeled as disabled began seeking changes in society (mostly in US and UK) that would allow them to have a better life. Since the 1980s, this effort has generally been termed disability rights advocacy or disability rights activism. The term is disability rights - not disabled rights or handicapped rights simply because historically and politically that's the term that the activists themselves have come to call it. So, the correct term is Disability Rights.

Many people still use handicapped or crippled or afflicted. None of these terms is looked upon with favor by anyone in the organized disability rights movement. Handicapped is truly detested in U.K. circles. Handicapped is offensive - it's a limiting term.

Dancing Around the Term "Disability"

The term challenged is just sugar coating, as is impaired, diversability, Diffability (Differbility) a word combination of different and‎ ability, neurodiverse, or any other flavor of the day word that attempts to dance around or merely paper shuffling by incessant arguing between the Politically Correct (PC) crowd as to which word(s) are in fashion today or, according to them, should be used, instead of concentrating all that pointless emotional energy - the feeling sensation and physiological reaction that makes a specific emotion positive or negative - on the many very real issues that people with a disability actually REALLY need changing! In fact, the use of person-first language in scholarly writing may actually accentuate stigma.

Disabled

Calling a person disabled - not THE disabled, but a disabled person - is almost always considered correct. This is the primary term used in the UK and among academics and activists in the United States.

A term that grew in popularity during the first part of the 20th Century was handicapped. The conventional wisdom has it that this was a term first used by the social service field; its intent was to focus on social conditions: to say that an individual was handicapped by such and such - by paralysis, by being kept out of buildings, whatever. Back to the birth of today's disability rights movement: budding activists disliked having been defined by the social service system basically rebelled against the term handicapped SIMPLY BECAUSE IT HAD BEEN ASSIGNED TO THEM BY OTHERS - and, in choosing a new term, chose disabled. Anecdote has it that Judy Heumann led the change, arguing that "others handicap us, but we are disabled people" - this is not in any way an exact quote, but it carries the flavor of Heumann's thinking. So, activists in the U.S. began using disabled - As in disabled person.

Disability

Then a movement came along to change the wording to "people first language" - so, it was argued, use the term people with disabilities. Britain's disability rights theorists and disability studies leaders reject that, and stick with disabled person. Currently, in the USA activists seem divided. We must keep in mind that the disability rights movement and its thinking is almost unknown outside the movement itself! - People First Language: An Oppositional Viewpoint.

Terminology

• A physically disabled person is physically disabled. In this context, it is appropriate to use mobility impaired to signify the person's limitations.

• Some people who are autistic, blind, deaf, and a few other disabilities embrace their disability as a minority identity.

• A person with autism is either neurodiverse, autistic, or an "autie" within the autism community.

• A person with Asperger's is either neurodiverse, autistic, or an "aspie" within the autism/Asperger's community.

They are not dismissing the fact that they are disabled - but they are dismissing it as a negative experience. I am autistic. I am an aspie. I am deaf. I am blind. I am disabled.

Disabled Terminology in India

The terminology of reference to persons with disabilities has evolved in India from Physically Handicapped (viklang / विकलांग) to Physically Challenged to Differently / Specially Abled to Special Needs to Divyangjan (दिव्यांगजन - divine bodied) to improve the sensitivity and inclusiveness. Divyangjan (दिव्यांगजन), in Hindi means person having divine body. Google translates it to handicapped people, EngHindi.com puts the meanings as: specially-abled, disabled, handicapped. This is the official term for person with disability in India since 2016. Yet the debate over what is really respectful, what is sensitive, what is inclusive, still continues (refer to the references below for an extensive perspective on this issue). As of today, across the world and in India, most people with disability prefer to be referred as "Person with Disability". 

Further National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 has used several terminologies including Person with Disability, Student with disability, Differently-abled person, Child With Special Needs (CWSN), and Divyangjan or simply Divyang.

What is Diversability?

The term Diversability is currently yet another movement as the preferred term to replace the word disability and disabilities. The word disabilities is said to be associated with the past and people's negative experiences with institutions. The term Diversability however embraces the uniqueness and potential in every human being, disabled or non-disabled.

However, just like the term neurodiversity, and the opposition to people first language movement, not everyone agrees with the definition and use of the word diversability. The word diversability is still seen by many, as well as people with disabilities, as a defining label to describe people with physical, emotional, and cognitive challenges.

The Three Bad Words

There are some words that have been rejected nearly universally:

• Retardation and any derivative like retard, tard, retarded; spastic and spaz;

• Cripple and crip. Just like the N word is used between peers - spaz and crip are used between close friends.

Retard is not used by anyone to describe themselves.

Source: Disability or Disabled? Which Term is Right? By Ian Langtree, 2011, Disabled World. Retrieved July 25, 2022