8 Shifting Language, Cultural Norms, and Social Movements

“For me, disability-inclusive language is really about putting the person first; it’s being human-centered, and acknowledging that disability is an individual’s lived experience and an integral part of a person with the identity. Inclusive language really goes beyond the phrase used to describe a disability. Does the language perpetuate bias and stereotypes? Does it celebrate both the uniqueness and everydayness of the human experience? These, to me, are some of the inclusion decisions that we are empowered to make each and every day.”

– Monica Ackermann, Director – Enterprise Accessibility, Scotiabank^[1]

While we have come a long way as a society in how we collectively view, include, and respond to the accessibility needs, rights and dignity of people living with disabilities, we have very far yet to travel.  An understanding of the shifting and strengthening voice of those living with disabilities is essential to understanding why and how accessibility has emerged as such a vital topic of public discussion, design, and policy.  Moreover, as with other equity-deserving constituencies, disability rights and representation discourse are shifting rapidly.

The disability rights movement over the past century has many distinct narratives, but the prevailing themes are justice, rights, equity, access, inclusion and community.^[2] Over the last century, society’s thinking and attitudes toward people with disabilities have undergone significant changes. Prior to the mid-20th century, people with certain disabilities were often seen as passive, dependent, and in need of institutional care. This led to widespread institutionalization, with people with disabilities frequently being placed in large, congregate facilities where they were often subjected to neglect, abuse, and isolation.  These facilities – sanatoriums, psychiatric hospitals, houses for the blind, houses of refuge, and church-run homes – arose out of the Industrial Revolution, alongside reformatories and industrial schools (a precursor to residential schools).  At the turn of the last century, the mainstream level of knowledge and understanding about disability is shocking to us today.  Language and labeling evolved over the past century, with a move away from using terms that were seen as pejorative or stigmatizing.  Needless to say, widespread discourse about accessibility was absent in this era.  The first half of the twentieth century in the west was also marked by enthusiasm for eugenics.  The Eugenics Archives, a collaboration of scholars, survivors, students, and community partners, has created an incredible resource on this history, essential viewing for all Canadian citizens, and in particular those interested in systems mapping.^[3] In Alberta, the 1928 Sexual Sterilization Act was in force until 1972.

In the mid-20th century, a growing disability rights movement began to challenge institutionalization and the stigmatizing and infantilizing of people living with disabilities, advocating for greater rights, opportunities, and inclusion. This movement helped to shift public opinion and lead to a change in laws and policies that increased access to education, employment, and community living for people with disabilities.  Still, disability had not featured at all in the 1960 Canadian Bill of Rights Act.

The following two decades represented a tectonic shift. The accessibility movement was driven by a recognition of the right of people with disabilities to live in a community (i.e. non-institutional) setting and make choices about their own lives, as well as participate in the benefits of community living, such as increased socialization, greater access to services and support, and improved quality of life.  With exponential advances in scientific and social scientific understandings, such reforms became commonplace in the post-war era, particularly by the 1970s.  For some, such as adults with developmental disabilities, the 24-hour supervised group home settings that followed were a softer form of institutionalization, but were still highly programmed and regimented.

The 1970s was a decade marked by the quest for substantive equality and legal and constitutional recognition of human rights for access-denied groups, with Canada ratifying the two covenants that entrenched the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) – the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR)^[4] in 1976.  As social rights policy specialist Bruce Porter notes, “[a]s the Charter was being debated, people with disabilities were mobilizing around the International Year of Persons with Disabilities in 1981 and appearing at hearings before an All Party House of Commons Committee considering the rights of persons with disabilities.”^[5] The inclusion of Section 15 of the 1982 Charter of Rights and Freedoms made Canada the first democracy to include disability as a constitutionally prohibited ground of discrimination.^[6]

Court cases like Huck v Odeon Theatres,^[7] and expanded public awareness spurred by Terry Fox’s 1980 Marathon of Hope^[8] helped further establish the right to non-discrimination and a positive duty to accommodate the unique accessibility needs of those with diverse abilities. This was also an era of rising representation, in media and film, and in advisory and governance contexts.