Hello DEV Community! 👋
In recent months, you have probably seen a few posts from the DEV Community Success team — posts like this one on avoiding ...
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With you in spirit...but
While I am sure this is well intentioned and I am 100% behind you "in spirit" I have to say I think this needs a lot more thought.
Sure there are some "do not use" words and some that are preferred in a professional setting but it is ignorant to say what terms are acceptable in other Countries on a multi-national site.
What is acceptable language in the UK may be frowned upon in India, or Germany, or France or even America.
But if we ignore the fact that we are playing by American rules on acceptable language (fair enough, it is your site)...that glossary of terms you suggest we use has to be one of the worst I have ever seen.
The suggested glossary of terms....is not good!
A lot of the alternatives don't make sense, some of them are even more offensive (and that isn't a Country / culture thing as far as I am aware)!
I really hope you aren't going to use that as the yard stick for language used on the site as that is worrying. Some of the worst examples (there are a load of other "not great" examples, but these are just wrong) are as follows:
"Daft" - they suggest "dense" - so instead of a term that people just think of as silliness it is suggested we use a term that means stupid, unintelligent.
"deaf-mute" - use "Deaf person, nonspeaking Deaf person, signing Deaf person, hard of hearing person, DeafBlind person, ASL user, ASL speaker, signer"
Do you know how many of those suggested alternatives actually correspond to someone who is deaf-mute, one, "nonspeaking Deaf person".
"DeafBlind" has absolutely nothing to do with the ability to talk and is completely different to someone who is unable to talk or has a severe speech impairment. And people who can sign are often able to talk so the other terms are not descriptive enough. It shows a complete lack of understanding that any of these terms were suggested.
If you want a term to use, "non verbal" is the accepted term for someone who is mute or has trouble speaking (but yet again that is in the UK, I cannot assume that is preferred in America, Russia, Italy etc but it does feel very neutral language so I would imagine it works in other Countries too).
"idiotic" - I mean, are we really going to get to a place where I can't call someone an idiot for doing something stupid...seems a little bit too far (yet again, may be a cultural thing)
imbecile - instead use "dipshit"...I don't think I need to point out why this is not better.
"Morbidly obese" - they suggest "fat person". I think I will use a medical term instead of just being deliberately offensive. If somebody is classed as disabled purely due to their weight, they are "morbidly obese" and that is the medical condition that is related to their disability.
and my personal favourite...
"Special Needs" - which is the preferred term in the UK for children who have a learning impairment.
Please find a better source of terms and alternatives that are acceptable
Also I hope those points raised show that you cannot police ableism without context and you can't possibly have cultural context on a site like this.
As a final point on cultural differences and where the line should be drawn "This week has been crazy!" is considered ableist language by Eevis in their article...I think it would be a stretch to include that, I have used that term while speaking at an event on mental health...pretty sure nobody thought anything of it...but that is my opinion, maybe in America that would be entirely ableist.
You have already been ableist in this article!
You yourself have already made a mistake that needs fixing, in fact it is possibly the worst example of ableism I have seen on the site (no really, I am not joking!).
"more typical abilities". Just read that back, you are essentially saying that a person with a disability doesn't have typical abilities. A disability often does not affect a person's ability to do something, just the way in which they do it.
Just use "non disabled person" and stop dancing around it. I would imagine that term is acceptable across the world.
And if you can so easily end up as being ableist, what chance do most people have who won't have thought about their language as much as you have?
Suggestion
If you really must try and moderate this, please provide a list of terms that people should not use to describe other people.
So for example "I have had a crazy week"...may be perfectly acceptable language, "I am absolutely crazy about him / her / them"...also acceptable.
But "what, are you crazy?" when directed at a person or a group...sure, make that a banned term.
Then have a special list of terms to never use (except when educating others on unacceptable language) such as "retarded", "spaz" etc. which are pretty much universally considered derogatory.
That way there is no argument about culture, no arguments on what is acceptable.
Create some guidelines, add to them as other phrases come to light.
Super easy solution (oh wait, we can't say things are easy as that is condescending...uhhm, "should hopefully cause no bother to implement")...sorry my sarcastic nature was bound to slip out at some point 😋🤣
How can you possibly police this effectively without set rules?
As a final thought experiment on how on Earth you would enforce ableism without defined rules:
If someone has a cognitive impairment and continues to call people who use a wheelchair "cripples" as that is the word that works for them...where do you fall? On the side of the people who use a wheelchair or on the side of the person with a cognitive impairment?
Or as a much more likely scenario, what if I write an article that is acceptable to a UK audience and cross post it here and use a term you deem inappropriate. Are you expecting me to create a special version of the article just for dev.to with words replaced? That seems like a good way to limit the people talking about accessibility here (and there are already so few of us).
My personal thoughts
On a personal note I really think that trying to police albeism is a terrible idea and I am very much against policing anything other than offensive language directed at an individual or a group.
Why? It is hard enough getting people to talk about disability and inclusion, we don't need to put barriers in the way that put people off contributing to a conversation.
I would hope the fact that I spend every day talking about accessibility and inclusion as a profession would have some weight when considering the points I make as i am sure they go very much against the DEV teams core principles.
I have enough experience that the number 1 barrier to inclusion...is lack of understanding. The number one barrier to understanding is that people are afraid of using the wrong language or offending someone...ableism policing, while commendable in principle, will not and does not help fix this core problem, it adds to it.
Anyway, this comment took me waaaaay to long to write and it is late, I am intrigued if it is longer than the article itself 😋🤣.
I look forward to hearing your thoughts on this and have a ❤ and a 🦄 as while I may not agree, anything at all that is to do with inclusion, accessibility and disability gets my vote and as i said, I am with you in spirit!! 👍
People just need to communicate decently and respectfully, if they do then most of these detailed guidelines aren't really needed at all. If you keep it respectfully then automatically and intuitively you're not going to use terms like "idiotic", "deaf" or "blind" in your posts (especially posts of a technical nature here on dev.to, but not anywhere else either really). It's simply about respect or decency, which is unfortunately often lacking on social media and on the internet in general.
While addressing you, someone else or even a "group identity"...I agree. And if everyone had that attitude...well the world would be lovely. But I run a foul of letting emotions get in the way of civil discourse the same as most so perhaps it will never happen (I am trying to stop it!)!
There are a load of words that we can all agree are not acceptable. When used to describe people, they should not be used. There are certainly words that should be avoided in a public setting, but then where do we draw the line?
"Joe Lycett was hysterical at the concert last night", would you condone that as a sentence?
Because that has an etymology that is rooted in mental health conditions and literally means "of the womb" as it was thought to be a female only condition so is pretty derogatory to women!
Not mentioned once in that glossary...certainly of equal if not higher "offence points" than the other words presented without context. Certainly ableist language by the definitions presented so far.
Pretty soon you start running out of meaningful words you can use if there is no "cut off point" or line in the sand.
And for most people this certainly is not an issue, but when you work in the space, a little bit of forgiveness on out-dated language can go an awful long way to building a bridge that lets you educate someone and let them embrace inclusion.
I think I made the point reasonably well in the first comment that this is not a good idea and if they must pursue this to set some guidelines that are useful.
As InHuofficial has mentioned, it is kind of hard to use these languages since this does not include understanding of other countries or culture context. But some people has to be called out for being a knucklehead with comments that is not advisable on a international level.
Like in my country we have a diverse list of languages, dialects or our own singlish to refer to people or things. From what is talked about to race or action.
Even diabetic is considered a common term that my ministry of health uses this for their marketing to promote a healthy living in my country.
I understand where this is coming from. My country Singapore, has a general consensus that you are not allowed to have any racist comments/actions against people of another race. Due to our bloody history in racial riot that is written into my country's law to prevent any acts or comments of racism comes with a fine or jail term.
I see what you mean, you're hitting the nail on the head when you mention culture - what pushes me away is that all of this seems a bit too heavily US centric, based on American cultural concepts: identity politics and the "woke" thing. I'm moderately liberal and all for progressive causes, however the two concepts that I mentioned seem just too US centric - I think for other countries or cultures this needs to be "translated" to terminology that makes sense to them. We need more universal concepts which everyone can relate to - I'd say empathy and humanity.
Yeah, I hear you on that being US centric. I'm 100% on empathy and humanity by following the golden rule for dev.to on those principles.
I detest on those leaning towards woke and identity politics but that is another topic we will be talking for another day.
Posts like this are really important, thank you for sharing. 😊
It's so easy to absent mindedly use out dated idioms but as we strive to make the web more accessible it stands to reason the language we use to express ourselves must also be accessible by not causing offence, even if none was intended.
It really is so easy to be absent-minded about using this language.
I'm certainly guilty of having used ableist language, but now that I'm more aware, I'm trying my best to make the effort to consciously avoid it. I still slip up occasionally, but if I catch myself, I try to acknowledge it, fix it, apologize, and make a mental note to use a different word next time.
When I was young we used to use the word disabled in India, then came the media with this "Special"/"Differently Abled" word which I think came from US. Now again we are back to normal. Hope going ahead in future those who invent and market these words take a sample size across the world (not just US) among the people who belong to both abled and disabled and reach a consensus which word will be used otherwise people will get confused already in a world loaded with information and fights on the drop of a hat on the internet.
Yeah it did end up a little long 🤣
doubt