Handicapped vs. Disability

Handicapped - disability doesn’t make any difference to me. I have no problem with the word handicapped.

A disability is an inability to do something, a diminished capacity to perform in a specific way. A handicap, on the other hand, is a disadvantage imposed on an individual. A disability may or may not be a handicap, depending on the circumstances. Likewise, a handicap may or may not be caused by a disability. For example, blindness is a disability that can be anything but a handicap in the dark. In fact, in the dark the person who has sight is the one who is handicapped….(Hallahan and Kauffman 1994, 6).

Every few years we have to have new terms in order to be politically correct. It is really pointless, to me.

Janis

Some of the objection to the term handicap is the derivation, it literally means “hand and cap”, which brings to mind (visualizing and verbalizing here :-)) a blind guy with a cap.

—des