Adaptive Skiing: People First Language

Video Transcript

"When doing outdoor recreation for people with disabilities, something else to keep in mind beside the be open quote is using what we call people first language. People first language is nationally recognized as the politically correct way to talk with and interact with people with disabilities. People first language is exactly what the title is. Putting the person before the disability. For example, you wouldn't say autistic kids. You would say, a kid with autism. People are not defined by their disabilities. Instead, we want to define people by their abilities. And you'll see several different abilities that can be used with some of our adaptive equipment today. Right now, in the American population, there's approximately fifty million people with disabilities. Fifty million people, that's quite a bit. If you break that number down, there's about three hundred million Americans with disabilities. So if you do the math, it's about one out of every six people in America has some sort of disability. And so, to be respectful, we use people first language."