On Mon, Nov 23, 2009 at 1:30 AM, Piotr Konieczny piokon@post.pl wrote:

Hmmm, we should certainly have something on the "Best practices in dealing with handicapped editors and users."

First step - don't call them "handicapped".

The concept of sign language as a "form of communication for handicapped people" is considered quite offensive in the deaf community and the word itself is depreciated.

-Liam

-- Piotr Konieczny

"The problem about Wikipedia is, that it just works in reality, not in theory."

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On Tue, Nov 24, 2009 at 1:51 AM, Piotr Konieczny piokon@post.pl wrote:

Liam Wyatt wrote:

...

On Mon, Nov 23, 2009 at 1:30 AM, Piotr Konieczny <piokon@post.pl mailto:piokon@post.pl> wrote:

Hmmm, we should certainly have something on the "Best practices in
dealing with handicapped editors and users."

First step - don't call them "handicapped". The concept of sign language as a "form of communication for handicapped people" is considered quite offensive in the deaf community and the word itself is depreciated.

My apologies, not being a native English speaker. So what is the right word to use?

Well, for starters "dealing with" sounds like it is a problem or something that you are obliged to do. I would suggest "working with". But, in replacement of "handicapped" I believe it is better to be specific about the issue - therefore "vision impaired" or "hearing impared" or "mobility impared". Obviously, working with someone who cannot hear you requires a different form of action than working with someone who cannot see you. Therefore a generic word like "handicapped" is too broad. The word "handicapped" has too long an association with being a pejorative and derogatory term and is akin to calling someone a "cripple" these days (at least where I'm from).

For example, a while ago all parking spaces reserved for people in wheelchairs used to be called "handicapped parking". This was changed to "wheelchair parking" and is now "accessible parking". The difference is about giving someone an opportunity "This has easier access, park here" rather than a label "You're handicapped - park here!" There is also a grammar issue - it is not a place where you park wheelchairs or "handicapped people". Rather, it is a place where people in wheelchairs or with mobility-impairments can more easily get into/out of the car and get to the building.

As far as I am aware, the sign-language community in general do not see their use of sign language as a disability but rather as a second language. Obviously there is a broad range of people who use sign-language - from the profoundly deaf (no hearing at all), through various levels of hearning ability, and people who have learnt the language for interest or because they are teachers, friends or parents of people who use it. If I recall correctly, there is actually a reasonably heated ideological debate within the sign-language community about whether parents of deaf children should try to get their children to integrate into a "normal" classroom or should spend their time with other deaf children. This is very contentious and emotional as you can imagine.

So, if we are going to write a best-practice documentation or are going to write policies in general regarding a "sign-language Wikipedia" then we will need to do some serious collaboration with that community about their own culture. Furthermore, there is no standard sign-language even within English, just to make things tricky :-) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BANZSL

Hope that helps, -Liam

-- Piotr Konieczny

"The problem about Wikipedia is, that it just works in reality, not in theory."

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