Posted on March 23, 2026

By Angela Rapp Kennedy, CQL Quality Enhancement Specialist

“Words create worlds.” It’s a quote from Abraham Joshua Heschel, that I regularly cite in CQL presentations. It captures the power and impact of what we say and how we say it. Words can enhance (or stifle) lives, improve (or damage) perceptions, strengthen (or weaken) our treatment of others. While the disability services sector broadly recognizes the importance of respectful communication involving people with disabilities, there can be a disconnect between recognizing its importance and putting it into practice.

This Capstone, the first of a two-part series, brings to light issues involving respectful communication and provides some guidance for improving “what we say and how we say it.” In this edition, we’re first laying the groundwork for this topic. Then, Carli Friedman, CQL’s Director of Research, offers historical perspective and insight into person-first vs. identity-first language. Finally, we list some resources that will help you – through your words – create a world of dignity, opportunity, and community for all people.

Foundations For Respectful Communication

When you think back to a time when you felt respected, what was the situation? What occurred that made you feel respected? Who was involved and what did they do or say? When we ask that question during training, we hear that people felt heard, felt like they were seen, that they and/or their opinion were desired and valued, what they had to say and/or what they did mattered. While awards and organization-wide recognition are certainly important and useful, often the most meaningful forms of respect were more immediate, specific, and direct from co-workers, people supported, and supervisory/management personnel. 

One way for your organization to embrace and embody a respectful culture of communication is to ask people what they define as respect and what has led them to feel respected. This includes both the people who work for your organization as well as those for whom you provide supports. Act on what you hear. Create systems, traditions, and opportunities, to solicit, take note of, and share people’s thoughts, opinions, and contributions. Recognize their inherent value as a person as well as their value to the organization. 

Respect builds trust. Trust is essential to open, honest communication. Trust is built over time based on honesty, transparency, and consistency, ultimately leading to a feeling of safety and confidence in the actions of the person or organization being trusted. The Britannica Dictionary explains trust as, “to believe that someone or something is reliable, good, honest, effective, etc.: to have confidence in (someone or something).” Trust builds a foundation supporting people across the organization to be open to sharing and participating.

In Humble Inquiry, a book by Edgar H. Schen, you can “learn about creating a trusting environment with open communication across hierarchical boundaries. Practice less telling, more asking, and better listening.” You will hear from Edgar that, “Without good upward communication, organizations can be neither effective nor safe… Your organization may be underperforming because various employees or groups do not recognize the degree to which they are, in fact, interdependent.”

How we ask questions is vitally important, as the way and wording of the question speaks volumes. Here’s an example that might resonate with you. A direct support professional (DSP) comes to you and says, “I am so burnt out. John has been acting up all day and I’m exhausted.” One possible response might be, “So did you follow the behavior plan?” What the DSP likely hears is that you are telling them that they didn’t do what they were supposed to and that’s why things turned out the way they did. So, this is a “telling” question. You are telling them you think it is their fault. You are telling them you would’ve handled it differently. 

A humble inquiry approach would ask “So tell me more about what happened” – this opens the door for the DSP to talk more fully about the situation. They feel supported and you are both more likely to get to the root of the issue and find a good path forward. The lesson here is to honestly inquire, be genuinely interested in hearing, don’t tell.

Both our professional environments and our personal lives are impacted by language. Sometimes it is the simplest of words that can create the largest of impacts, both positive and negative. Dr. Carli Friedman, CQL Director of Research, has some valuable insights regarding respectful disability language.

The Importance of Respectful Disability Language

By Carli Friedman, CQL Director of Research

Language has power. It shapes the ways we see and understand our world, in ways that we don’t even realize. Unfortunately, problematic disability-related language is almost everywhere in our society. Most of the time people don’t mean to imply the things they do with the disability language they use, these words are just part of the common language in our society.

Historically, language has been used to deny the personhood of disabled people – to frame people with disabilities as less than human, which results in inhumane treatment. This includes some of the worst horrors, such as unethical dangerous experimentation, segregation, and forced sterilization. For example, words such as ‘idiot,’ ‘moron,’ or ‘insane’ were first created as medical diagnoses to label people with intellectual disabilities, psychiatric disabilities, and people without disabilities in order to segregate them into institutions and sterilize them against their will (Trent, 1994).

While much of this history, although not all of it, is in the past, it is still extremely common today to casually hear words like ‘idiot,’ ‘moron,’ or ‘crazy.’ In fact, 38% of people who work in the disability field report commonly saying crazy, 27% saying stupid, and 20% saying insane (Friedman & Gordon, 2023). In addition to the horrible historical legacy, these words can also be extremely stigmatizing. For example, although the R-word is less common today, how often do you hear people causally say the word ‘stupid’? It’s not necessarily used to describe people with intellectual disabilities, and instead is often used to bully nondisabled people. Either way, it suggests that anyone with intellectual or learning disabilities is ‘less than’ and should feel shame. Basically, even when not directly talking about disabled people, many of these words still shape how we think about disability, such as reinforcing stereotypes and increasing stigma, and can make disabled people feel powerless. 

Person-First Versus Identity-First Language

In fact, the history of how people with disabilities have been treated, especially with their personhood ignored or denied, is what led to the introduction of ‘person-first’ language in the first place. It was people with disabilities’ attempt to reduce stigma by explicitly reminding people without disabilities ‘hey we’re people!’ and not these labels or slurs that have been used to think about us. 

For a long time, the ways we provided human services treated people with disabilities like they were not actually people with skills, goals, and dreams, and who were deserving of rights. That’s a large part of why person-first language has been ‘drilled’ into human service providers for years, so they understand the values behind person-first language. The core lesson is that people with disabilities are in fact people, and services and supports should recognize this with person-centered practices, dignity of risk, and more. 

However, there’s also been another type of language which has been used for decades but has been less common in the human service field, called ‘identity-first language.’ Identify-first language, such as saying ‘disabled person,’ is a reclaiming of disability that understands disability as an integral part of a person’s identity and who they are. Identity-first language pushes back against stigma by emphasizing that disability is a form of diversity and pride, rather than something negative or bad that should be avoided. Disability is not bad or tragic, and it doesn’t mean something is wrong with someone, so saying the word isn’t a bad or disrespectful thing. Disability is an identity, social minority, and community, and therefore empowering! These are the core lessons behind identity-first. 

You should always use the types of language a specific person wants you to use to refer to them. Generally, many in the disability community, including physically disabled people, Deaf people (Deaf should be capitalized to mark identity/community, whereas lowercase deaf refers to hearing impairment), and autistic people, prefer identity-first language (Andrews et al., 2019; Andrews et al., 2022; Autistic Self Advocacy Network, n.d.; Dunn & Andrews, 2015; Taboas et al., 2023). On the other hand, people with intellectual disabilities and psychiatric disabilities often prefer person-first language (Self Advocates Becoming Empowered, 2014).

Enhancing Respectful Communication In Your Work

By Angela Rapp Kennedy, CQL Quality Enhancement Specialist

Effective, respectful communication requires you to ask, seek, look, listen, and take the time to be present. Engendering respectful organizational communication requires time, thoughtfulness, and intentionality. This investment will pay dividends both in terms of the people you employ with increased engagement and longevity, and so importantly, in terms of enhancing the quality of life for the people who receive supports.

We’ll be digging deeper into respectful communication in our April 2026 edition of Capstone, with additional examples of problematic language including suggestions for recognizing and changing your language from Carli Friedman and an interview about the ‘power of words’ with CQL’s Courtney Kelly Chapman. In the meantime, we wanted to provide a listing of resources to help enhance respectful communication in your daily interactions and everyday services.

• Stanford University: Disability Language Guide
• Mosaic: 7 Ways to Communicate Respectfully
• Abilities Manitoba: Talking the Talk – Your Words Matter
• CQL: Ableism Research
• SABE: People-First Language
• ASAN: Identity-First Language
• Employers for Change: Inclusive and Accessible Communications

References

• Andrews, E. E., Forber-Pratt, A. J., Mona, L. R., Lund, E. M., Pilarski, C. R., & Balter, R. (2019). #SaytheWord: A disability culture commentary on the erasure of “disability”. Rehabilitation Psychology, 64(2), 111-118. https://doi.org/10.1037/rep0000258
• Andrews, E. E., Powell, R. M., & Ayers, K. (2022). The evolution of disability language: Choosing terms to describe disability. Disability and health journal, 15(3), 101328. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dhjo.2022.101328
• Autistic Self Advocacy Network. (n.d.). Identity-first language. https://autisticadvocacy.org/about-asan/identity-first-language/
• Dunn, D. S., & Andrews, E. E. (2015). Person-first and identity-first language: Developing psychologists’ cultural competence using disability language. American Psychologist, 70(3), 255-264. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0038636
• Friedman, C., & Gordon, Z. (2023). Ableist language & disability professionals: Commonly used language. The Council on Quality and Leadership. https://www.c-q-l.org/resources/articles/ableist-language-amp-disability-professionals-commonly-used-language/
• Self Advocates Becoming Empowered. (2014). People first language: The basics. https://www.sabeusa.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/People-First-Language-Manual.pdf
• Taboas, A., Doepke, K., & Zimmerman, C. (2023). Preferences for identity-first versus person-first language in a US sample of autism stakeholders. Autism, 27(2), 565-570. https://doi.org/10.1177/13623613221130845
• Trent, J. W. J. (1994). Inventing the feeble mind: A history of mental retardation in the United States. University of California Press.