Words mean things

If a source refers to “disability justice,” they are referring to a particular movement within a particular context, one distinct from the disability-rights movement (seeGlossary). “Inclusion” is not merely the last letter in “DEI”: it is a specific concept that arose out of specific action and activism to end the segregation of disabled youth in school and in wider society. If someone calls themselves a “cripple,” they are reclaiming a slur, and that does not mean you have the right to use the word, too (unless you are disabled and reclaiming the slur for yourself). If someone calls themselves a “crip,” they are reclaiming a slur and are part of a tradition that has arisen out of academic critical theory. If someone tells you, “I identify as disabled,” they are, more likely than not, making an explicit political statement about the value of disabled lives, one that has its origins in specific movements — they’re not merely co-opting the language of gender identity. If someone tells you, “I identify as a person with a disability,” they are also making a political statement grounded in a different activist movement that’s in tension with, though not in opposition to, the first. If someone identifies themself as “Deaf with a big D,” they are making a clear statement.

 
However a person self-identifies to you, the journalist, note their wording and respect their wording.

The words we — we journalists and other media professionals, we disabled people, and we in society as a whole — use to describe disability also mean things. First of all, disabilities are not “issues.” A person does not have “mental-health issues,” “behavioural issues” or “accessibility issues.” “Accessibility” is not a synonym for disability; it is a description of an environment and the way people exist within it. In many cases, it is a legal standard. “Special needs” is a meaningless term, as is “differently abled.” “A voice for the voiceless” is neither. Avoid such phrases except when directly quoting a source and be skeptical of a source who uses them.

 
“Special education” is a term used to classify children into the streams educators believe are appropriate for them. “Totally disabled” is a term used by insurance companies to judge fitness for work. These are not appropriate to use outside of these contexts, as the people to whom they are applied associate them with meaningful consequences.

The terms used by bureaucracy also mean things — sometimes different things depending on the bureaucracy in question. It is our job as journalists to make these distinctions legible for our audience. If a person says they are “on disability,” are they on short-term disability leave or a long-term disability leave, receiving a Canada Pension Plan disability benefit, on disability leave that is covered by a workplace plan or by a provincial social-assistance benefit? Each has different requirements and different implications for the disabled person, and if you are writing a story about someone who is unable to work due to disability, you need to know which specific terms apply to your source, what the terms mean for them now and what options might be available to the source in the future. You also need to be able to explain this to your audience. Someone on long-term disability and with work-related health insurance, for example, is likely to be able to afford a higher standard of living than someone on provincial income assistance. This disparity will have implications in terms of their choices, priorities and perspectives.

No one expects you to know all this right away. But considering what might lie behind the plain meaning of a word might give you a better idea of which sources to ask about a story, which questions you ask those sources and how you should explain their answers to your audience. It's one thing to explain something poorly or confusingly — it's another not to know that there's something to explain at all. If you don't know, it's generally advisable to ask. Reporters often get the nuances of disability-related programs, services and language wrong because they don't know how to check their own work.