ATTENTION: Emergency outage for Cougarweb and CATS (telephone registration) until 1:45 pm. More
Offices and day classes closed Friday for In-Service. Language
Many people still view persons with disabilities as individuals to be pitied, feared, or ignored. The attitudes may arise from discomfort with individuals who are perceived to be different or simply from a lack of information.
Positive language empowers. Following are examples of affirmative and negative phrases.
| Affirmative Phrases | Negative Phrases |
| Person with a psychiatric disability | crazy, nuts |
| Person with mental retardation, person with a developmental disability | retarded, mentally defective |
| Person with a disability | handicapped |
| Person who is deaf, person who is hard of hearing | suffers from hearing loss, deaf and dumb, deaf-mute |
| Person who has multiple sclerosis | afflicted by MS, victim of, stricken by |
| Person with epilepsy, person with a seizure disorder | epileptic |
| Person who uses a wheelchair | confined or restricted to a wheelchair, wheelchair bound |
| Person with a physical disability | crippled, lame, deformed |
| Does not use speech, uses synthetic speech | dumb, mute |
| Seizure | fit |
| Successful, productive | has overcome his/her disability |
| Says he/she has a disability | admits he/she has a disability |
| Person without a disability | normal person (implies that the person with a disability isn’t normal) |
Contact Information
Disability Services
Eibling Hall 101
614-287-2570 (V/TTY)
866-773-5131 (VP)
614-429-1227 (VP)
614-287-6054 (Fax)
General Office Hours
Monday - Thursday
8:00 AM - 7:00 PM
Friday
8:00 AM - 5:00 PM
(Scheduled Appointments Only)
Monday through Friday
8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.
Walk-In Hours
Monday and Wednesday
8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.
