The right words to talk about disability

The revolution that has taken place in recent years in relation to the concept and perception of disability is significant, complex and imbued with an important social value: its primary objective is in fact to unhinge the old paradigms that saw disability as a disease to be hidden, to be treated, very often to be marginalised. And certainly not as a condition of uniqueness that deserves proper appreciation and real integration.

It is a revolution, this one, played out substantially on the level of communicative codes, first and foremost the verbal and the iconic. In relation to the former, i.e. the written and spoken languages, once the old denominations have been completely abandoned (some of which literally make one shudder nowadays), today we speak, in English, in Italian and increasingly in all the languages of the world, of persons with disabilities: at the centre of this expression are precisely the persons, not the barriers or even the psycho-physical limitations that each and every one of us may have in a permanent or temporary form. Furthermore, next to the word persons we find a preposition that adds, not subtracts, but above all does not indicate a deficiency. According to this new expression, persons therefore possess one or more characteristics that make them unique: they are persons with disabilities.

Still on the level of verbal codes, thanks to the impetus of major international bodies such as the United Nations, but also of important international consortia grouping associations dedicated to the enhancement of disabilities (www.inclusion-europe.eu), we always start from the word person to indicate the various disabilities. We therefore say person with visual disability, intellectual disability, hearing disability, person on the autistic spectrum, person in a wheelchair, and so on.

This language revolution finds its most recent and undoubtedly most significant roots in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD), published at the end of 2006 and ratified by more than 80 countries in 2009. Article 8 of the Convention clearly states that the first important effect of the correct use of language is to increase respect for the rights of all people.

Let us now move on to non-verbal communication. In 2015, the Graphic Design Division of the UN Department of Public Information commissioned and produced a new logo to indicate disability, not without difficulty and numerous reworkings. The new logo replaces the one we are still familiar with today, which depicts a stylised man sitting in a wheelchair, in a static position. Instead, the new symbol depicts a human being, also stylised, placed in a circle to express the harmony between all people despite their diversity. The human being is clearly inspired by Leonardo da Vinci's Vitruvian Man, whose masculine features are however lost in order to acquire, at the ends of his hands and feet, small spheres also intended to emphasise dynamism, circularity and multiple potentialities.