Also written: people with disabilities, person with a disability
| Source | Year | Position |
|---|---|---|
| SEIU | 2020 | Use |
| National Center on Disability and Journalism | 2021 | Use with care |
| Sierra Club | 2021 | Use with care |
| American Psychological Association | 2023 | Use with care |
“disabled Correct: people with disabilities”
SEIU's stylebook, which alphabetizes entries by the avoided form, lists “disabled” as the headword and prescribes “people with disabilities” as the correct alternative — a person-first preference. The recommendation here is to use people with disabilities; the avoid applies to the bare adjective “disabled.”
““Disabled people” is an example of identity-first language (in contrast to people-first language). … NCDJ Recommendation: Ask the disabled person or disability organizational spokesperson about their preferred terminology. Conforms to AP style, which adds that in describing groups of people, or when individual preferences cannot be determined, use person-first language.”
NCDJ — the anchor source — treats people-first (“people with disabilities”) and identity-first (“disabled people”) as both legitimate, with the individual's stated preference controlling. Its default when preference is unknown follows AP: use person-first language for groups. So people with disabilities is the safe default, but never an override of how a person describes themselves.
“When writing about a person or persons with a disability, refer to the National Center on Disability and Journalism's Disability Language Style Guide for specifics on how to respectfully describe particular disabilities.”
Sierra Club uses person-first constructions (“people living with disabilities,” “a person or persons with a disability”) throughout its ableism section and defers to NCDJ for specifics on describing particular disabilities. It does not prescribe a single form so much as point writers to the disability-journalism standard.
“The discussion of person-first versus identity-first language was first applied to issues regarding people with disabilities. … Language should be selected with the understanding that the individual's preference supersedes matters of style. If you are uncertain about how a person identifies, it is recommended that you ask their preference. …”
APA frames people-first language (“people with disabilities”) and identity-first language as two valid approaches that originated in the disability context. Its governing rule is that individual preference supersedes style; when a preference is unknown, ask. For some communities (Deaf, autistic) identity-first is the expected default until a preference is learned.
The corpus’s default group term — and the canonical home of the person-first vs. identity-first debate. “People with disabilities” is person-first language: the person before the condition. SEIU prescribes it flatly as the correct form. Sierra Club uses person-first constructions throughout its ableism section. And NCDJ — the anchor source for this chapter — encodes the AP-aligned default: when describing groups, or when individual preferences can’t be determined, use person-first language. As a safe default for organizational and group-level writing, this is the settled answer.
What keeps the page at use-with-care is that the default is only a default. NCDJ and the APA both treat identity-first language (“disabled people”) as equally legitimate, and both give the same governing rule: the individual’s preference supersedes matters of style — when uncertain, ask. The APA notes the debate originated in exactly this context, and that some communities run the other way: Deaf and autistic communities widely prefer identity-first language, where the person-first form can read as distancing the person from an identity they claim. A writer who applies “people with disabilities” uniformly, over a subject’s stated preference, has followed the style guide into the exact error the style guides warn against.
What was once a sharper rule has flattened. Person-first language was taught for years as the single respectful form; the current sources (NCDJ 2021, APA 2023) describe two valid forms with preference as the tiebreaker. The neighboring pages carry the rest of the picture: “disabled” (the identity-first adjective, with its own community standing), “handicapped” (dated, avoid), and the chapter’s identity-first exemplar, capital-D “Deaf.”