BAM! Not only is October Blindness Awareness Month, but it is also Disability Awareness Month. Below is a post written by Susan, author of Adventures in Low Vision, who kindly agreed to let us share this brilliant post on our blog this month.
I was playing with my cat as a kid still in single digits on the kitchen floor. Twenty minutes passed. He decided he wanted to play elsewhere. The orange tabby was not quite fast enough. I scooped him up, looked at his face and called him a silly bastard.
Mom heard me. She was quick to admonish me by asking, “Do you know what that means?” I bet my ears turned red. My embarrassment grew when, as parents do, she gave the word’s definition. I stopped calling the cat a bastard.
Words have meaning. Handicapped. Crippled. The R word. Blind. Visually impaired. A person with a disability. Where do words and phrases like these come from? Check out the etymology of handicapped and see if you still want to refer to people with disabilities as handicapped. Continue reading