PR and ‘handicapped people’: 

A PR-guide to language and practices

Question #1: Is ‘handicapped people’, the most politically correct term you can use in your communications as PR-professional? If so, elaborate. If not, what is a better term?

Question #2: What could be the role of PR in dealing with ‘handicapped people’ in your organization?

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Answer #1

The answer is no. It once maybe was, but it is not anymore. Nowadays, preferred language is ‘someone with a certain disability’. Though views vary.

But let’s dig a bit deeper. Why is this an interesting question? Maybe, because you noticed that as an PR-professional you can more than ever do something wrong in communicating with or about people with a disability causing controversy at best and an outright crisis at worst.

The underlying thought that helps explain the controversy around words, is the belief that language is performative. This belief encompasses that particular language use creates a particular reality that is desirable or not. So changing a certain reality in this view, comprises changing language. The need for changing reality can come from (perceived) discrimination or other forms of exclusion. Applied here, the language has changed from ‘handicapped’ to ‘someone with a disability’. This language change, is termed a discourse-shift in this blog. The discourse on disability shifted from ‘imperfect and incapable individuals’, to ‘full individuals in their own right, whom happen to have limitations on certain aspects of life’. The concepts of ‘discourse’ and ‘performative language’, are here elaborated upon because it enables you as a PR-professional from now on not only to follow ‘words’, but broader societal changes surrounding disability. Thereby making you a more competent PR-professional 

Answer #2

So this one is a bit tricky, as there are big cross-cultural differences in answering this question. There are arguably to two opposing camps (or discourses to complicate matters): the ‘human rights’ camp and the ‘disabilities’ camp. This is further clarified by two statements on train accessibility for wheelchair users.

Human rights: “I need accessible trains, because I have the right to freedom of movement”

Disability: “I want accessible trains, because I can’t walk steps”

The thing here is that certain societies are more human rights camps (e.g. US, UK, Scandinavian nations), while other are more disability camps (e.g. Netherlands, Germany). So a simple answer to the question would be to say that the role for PR is more limited in the Netherlands and Germany as offering accessibility here is a gesture in good spirit, and more extensive in the US, UK and Scandinavia as it is deeply intertwined with human rights and humanity. But as PR is becoming a more global field of study, and as PR is also often practiced in global organizations. I propose the following practices:

1. In a globally active organization, look to find local best practices and utilize cultural predispositions of certain nation cultures to be a leader across the world.
2. In a locally active organization, development on this topic is served with global knowledge (so not only local practices and science using local data) 

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This article was written by Jason. He feels a great need for organizations to be responsive to social demands, be they explicit or implicit. Jason writes blogs from various perspectives within the social and behavioral sciences