Vocabulary Tips

Affirmative Phrases	Negative Phrases
Person with intellectual disability	Retarded, mentally defective
Person who is blind, person who is visually impaired	The blind
Person with a disability	The disabled, handicapped
Person who is deaf, person who is hard of hearing	Suffers a hearing loss, the deaf
Person who has multiple sclerosis	Afflicted by MS
Person with cerebral palsy	CP victim
Person with epilepsy, person with seizure disorder	Epileptic
Person who uses a wheelchair	Confined or restricted to a wheelchair
Person who has muscular dystrophy	Stricken by MD
Physically disabled	Crippled, lame, deformed
Person without a disability	Normal person (implies that the person with a disability isn't normal)
Unable to speak, uses synthetic speech	Dumb, mute
Seizure	Fit
Successful, productive	Has overcome his/her disability; courageous (when it implies the person has courage because of having a disability)
Person with psychiatric disability	Crazy, nuts
Person who no longer lives in an institution	The deinstitutionalized
Says she/he has a disability	Admits she/he has a disability

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