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> According to that definition, everyone living in a northern climate becomes disabled each winter This seems valid to me. The prefix "dis-" is a negation pre

> According to that definition, everyone living in a northern climate becomes disabled each winter This seems valid to me. The prefix "dis-" is a negation prefix[1], and "abled" means to have a range of abilities[2], so it is equivalent to not-abled. Not having a range of abilities. There's nothing in this most basic description that suggests being disabled is an abnormal or permanent state. In the context of getting to the grocery store in the winter, I am quite literally disabled by the cold temperatures, unless I have some natural occurrence or form of technology that en-ables me–el nino, clothing, vehicles, underground tunnels. I am disabled from reading this screen if I don't have my glasses on. This is a permanent disability, but I can correct it by either putting on my glasses, or by making the text bigger. Our set of abilities is not immutable, and technology is just meant to add to this set. Microsoft's document is just about making designers aware that not everyone always has the same set of abilities as the designers themselves. Recognizing this allows us to design technology that helps more people in more situations. WHO did not change _the_ definition of "disabled", they _corrected their own_ definition to recognize that whether or not a person is disabled is a contextually dependent question. [1] http://www.dictionary.com/browse/dis- http://www.dictionary.com/browse/dis- [2] http://www.dictionary.com/browse/abled http://www.dictionary.com/browse/abled

kevhito 10y ago
I think my comment rubbed a lot of people the wrong way, and for that I apologize. Actually, I agree with almost everything the replies argue. My point -- which I did didn't make well -- was that I think using the word "disabled" in the WHO sense is either disingenuous or silly. Silly, because if everyone is disabled at all times, then the word becomes meaningless. Disingenuous in the sense that "not having a range of ability" implicitly really means having an unusually or unexpectedly limited or different (but not strictly larger) range of abilities as compared to some poorly-defined range for a "typical" human, without actually admitting that we are comparing against some standard. Yes, the standard is vague and poorly defined. And I agree that disability doesn't need to be permanent or easily visible or significant, that it is context dependent, and it obviously isn't binary. I have no qualms with the idea that everyone or nearly everyone is, at some point and in some ways, disabled. And perhaps most importantly, we should disentangle the concept of disability with moral/value judgments. Still, I think all of the examples I've seen on this thread are implicitly comparing against a standard but explicitly pretending they are not. You mention that you are disabled from reading your screen. Because many humans would have that ability. You didn't say you were disabled because you don't have the x-ray vision needed to see through walls. Just like nobody would say a person is disabled because their body doesn't produce enough fur or whale blubber to survive a new england winter.

kevhito 10y ago

I think my comment rubbed a lot of people the wrong way, and for that I apologize. Actually, I agree with almost everything the replies argue. My point -- which I did didn't make well -- was that I think using the word "disabled" in the WHO sense is either disingenuous or silly. Silly, because if everyone is disabled at all times, then the word becomes meaningless. Disingenuous in the sense that "not having a range of ability" implicitly really means having an unusually or unexpectedly limited or different (but not strictly larger) range of abilities as compared to some poorly-defined range for a "typical" human, without actually admitting that we are comparing against some standard. Yes, the standard is vague and poorly defined. And I agree that disability doesn't need to be permanent or easily visible or significant, that it is context dependent, and it obviously isn't binary. I have no qualms with the idea that everyone or nearly everyone is, at some point and in some ways, disabled. And perhaps most importantly, we should disentangle the concept of disability with moral/value judgments. Still, I think all of the examples I've seen on this thread are implicitly comparing against a standard but explicitly pretending they are not. You mention that you are disabled from reading your screen. Because many humans would have that ability. You didn't say you were disabled because you don't have the x-ray vision needed to see through walls. Just like nobody would say a person is disabled because their body doesn't produce enough fur or whale blubber to survive a new england winter.