Senate Bill 94 Individuals with disabilities. Sen. Landske. Changes terms used to describe individuals with disabilities.
Perhaps I’m not sensitive enough, but this one strikes me as a waste of paper. It changes: “hearing, deaf, and hard of hearing individuals” to “individuals who hear, individuals who are deaf, and individuals who are hard of hearing.”
It changes “participant who was permanently disabled” to “participant who had a permanent disability.”
It changes “children who are mentally retarded” to “children who have mental retardation”.
It changes “developmentally disabled adults” to “adults with a developmental disability.”
And it goes on like this for 177 pages. I mean, I get the point. “My disability doesn’t define me!” But, if you’re picking through the Indiana Code making changes at this level of subtlety, perhaps it does. In any event, it passed the Senate 47 to 0.
[tags]SB94-2007[/tags]
[…] SB 94 – Disability semantics bill By Doug Senate Bill 94 passed the House 88 to 1. As you may recall, this is the bill that merely edits the terms in the Indiana Code by which individuals with disabilities are referred. And it’s not like the current version uses the term Mongoloid to refer to retardation or anything. Rather, the bill wastes a lot of paper to do things like change “hearing, deaf, and hard of hearing individuals†to “individuals who hear, individuals who are deaf, and individuals who are hard of hearing.†[…]