MADRID, 20 Dic. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The Spanish Paralympic Committee (CPE) confirmed this Tuesday that its General Assembly has approved the launch of the document ‘Inclusive language on disability in sport’, with which it intends to make recommendations on the use of terminology in the field of sport for people with disabilities and/or paralympic sport.
The document, which is already available at the link https://www.paralimpicos.es/lenguaje-inclusivo, aims to “provide recommendations and advice on the use of one term or another, in a simple and direct way, with a vocation that it is useful for users of the Spanish language,” said the CPE.
Both the recommendations and the arguments included in this document represent a development of those already included in the terminology chapter of the ‘White Paper on Sports for People with Disabilities in Spain’, edited by CERMI, the CPE and the ONCE Foundation, therefore that correspond “to the feeling of the majority of the sector of disability and sport that these entities represent”.
Among the main recommendations, the use of the term ‘persons with disabilities’ stands out, as a term enshrined in the United Nations Convention, in Spanish and European legislation and defended by the associative movement for disability in Spain, while the use of certain euphemisms that have spread in recent times such as ‘functional diversity’, ‘other abilities’ or ‘different abilities’, as well as others that have been fully overcome and have a contemptuous tinge such as ‘disabled’, ‘handicapped’ or ‘deficient’.
With regard to the more sporting sphere, the CPE document discourages the use of fairly widespread terms such as ‘adapted sport’, ‘para-sport’ and their derivatives, and proposes the use of ‘sport for people with disabilities’, ‘sport for Paralympian’, ‘athlete with a disability’ or ‘Paralympian’.
“After the approval of the General Assembly, the CPE is now undertaking communication work with all the actors involved in sports for people with disabilities in Spain, with the aim of achieving the widest possible dissemination and trying to harmonize the use of the terminology in the industry,” the committee noted.