Bint alshamsa over at My Private Casbah has a great post up about the use of “differently abled” when referring to people with disabilities.

Many non-disabled people tend to be confused about what the term “disabled” means. It doesn’t have anything to do with what the PWD is actually able to do. It refers to the way that society limits certain kinds of people from being fully included within it, specifically those whose bodies are perceived as being deficient, inferior or abnormal. In fact, we all have different ways of doing things but only some of those ways of doing things are categorized as “alternative”. The term “differently abled” is just another way of hierarchizing PWD lives as somehow abnormal.

Another argument I’ve always liked in favor of using “people with disabilities” is that it puts people first. Thus recognizing that first and foremost, we are all people.