At CommunicateHealth, we’re passionate about creating health communications that make everyone feel seen, included, and respected. And that can be especially important when writing for or about disabled people. Which is why we’re so excited to announce the launch of another original publication, our Inclusive Language Playbook: Writing About Disability!
As you may know, we’ve covered a number of topics related to disability in the past. For example, we’ve shared thoughts on the (lack of) representation of disabled people in clinical trials. In this post on creating inclusive sexual health content, we advocated for bringing disability into the conversation (which the TV show Sex Education does beautifully!). And we’ve recommended a couple of disability-related books that can really help shift perspective — We’re Not Broken and True Biz.
Some of you may have noticed that we’ve used an identity-first approach in this post (“disabled people,” not “people with disabilities”), and the same is true for the playbook. This choice reflects our constantly evolving language landscape as many people have reclaimed the term “disabled” for themselves. We’ve made this shift very intentionally, following the lead of disability community leaders — and we want to call out that it’s a departure from language we’ve used in older posts.
We also want to acknowledge that it’s not everyone’s preference. After all, everyone who has a disability has their own relationship with disability. Throughout the playbook, we’ve highlighted multiple perspectives on sensitive topics. Our goal is not to give one-size-fits-all guidance, but to explore the nuances of rapidly evolving language, sharing food for thought for our fellow health communicators along the way.
Finally, the new playbook joins 2 other recent-ish CommunicateHealth publications: our Framework for Equity-Centered Health Communication and our Inclusive Language Playbook: Writing for LGBTQ+ Communities. If you have feedback on any of these — or suggestions for the topic of our next inclusive language playbook! — you can respond to this email. We’d ❤️ to hear from you!
The bottom line: Our new inclusive language playbook on writing about disability is out now — check it out and share!
Copy/paste to share on social (and tag us!): 🚨 NEW #HealthComm resource alert! 🚨 The CommunicateHealth team has just released a new #InclusiveLanguage playbook on writing about #disability. Learn more: https://communicatehealth.com/wehearthealthliteracy/presenting-our-new-inclusive-language-playbook-on-writing-about-disability #HealthCommunication #HealthLiteracy #DEI
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