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How To Talk To: A Person With Disabilities

Disability Advocate Tiffany Nickel joined us for a Live Interactive Blog on talking to those with disabilities.  Read questions viewers asked and Tiffany's respones at the bottom of this page.

What happened to you? Do your legs move? How long will you be in that chair?

Innocent questions from a curious child are not unusual, but when those questions come from an adult, it's rude, and not the questions you'd usually ask someone you just met.

But when a person has a visible disability, people forget boundaries and feel they can ask or say anything.

Wichita teacher Tiffany Nickel has a back to school routine that includes a letter to families explaining who she is and how long she's been in education.

She also knows what questions to expect from her new students.

"They're always interested if I can drive, how I get in the driver's seat, how do I sleep at night, how do I get dressed?

Nickel uses a wheelchair since a spinal cord injury thirteen years ago. She knows kids are curious but they're also eager to help.

"My kids are really good, they know sometimes it's difficult for me to turn pages," Nickel told me," they'll say, can I help you staple things or tear things?"

People who have a disability often welcome your help, but don't assume you know what to do.

Grady Landrum explains.

"If you ask someone can I help you, then I would always say the second questions should be, what can I do for you to help you?"

Landrum runs Wichita State University's Disability Services Office.  But he also has personal experience; he's used a wheelchair since a car accident in the 1970's.

Landrum says things have changed since then; people with disabilities are integrated in the community, thanks in part to laws that ensure opportunity and accommodations. But people with disabilities often find they are still stereotyped.

"Some people do come up and they talk louder or slower to you like you have some type of mental disability in association with your physical disability,"Landrum says.

Nickel agrees. "Very often when I'm with someone else, we might go to a restaurant, or to a store. The clerk or the attendant will look over me and to the able bodied person and say, how may I help you?"

But that's not all, most of us would never put out feet up on someone's wheel chair, but it happens.

"I don't think people understand that the wheel chair is part of my personal space," Nickel explains. "So very often people will come up and lean on my push bar and they're having a conversation with me." Nickel also says people need to come around and make the eye contact.

Landrum has more advice."I just think you need to be treating people with the same courtesy you want to be treated with. Ask them questions, for assistance, or to clarify. Don't ask stuff that's too personal until you get to know them."

Because as Nickel explains, being differently-abled doesn't change everything about you.

"Don't start a conversation, how fast does that machine go, or things that immediately refer to my disability. I prefer they see me for a person, instead of someone with a disability or someone that's in a wheelchair."

More Online:

• Kansas Disability Coalition
  
• ADA Website
  
• People First Language - What to Say, What Not to Say
  
• Wheelchair Sports, Inc.
  
• Wichita State Disability Services