Check out this article from USA TODAY:
‘I am not ashamed’: Disability advocates, experts implore you to stop saying ‘special needs’
Having worked in the fields of early intervention services and special education for many decades, this story has a tired theme but one that may resonant with younger parents and professionals. My first teaching job was in 1971. I was teaching a class of “multiply handicapped” students in a school for the severely mentally retarded and educable children.
In 1975 the Education for All Handicapped Children Act (EAHCA) a comprehensive federal law known as Public Law 94-142, was enacted. It required public schools to provide a free appropriate education for all children with disabilities, ages 3 to 21. When the law was reauthorized in 1990 it was changed to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). Subsequently the terms of “retarded” and physical handicaps were discarded and collapsed to the disabled.
During this time, the concept of “special needs” crept into the increasingly benign language and included those with mental health, cognitive impairments, physical disabilities, and increasingly, autism. Many parents described their children as having unique learning needs or accommodations.
Then, while I was teaching graduate students, the term of humanity first was the preferred description. Students with disabilities or students with learning challenges, emphazing that all children were children and the accompanying descriptions were secondary coniderations.
This article emphasizes the new movement with an emphasis on identify first, hence the return of the disabled student, child, or adult. It appears to be in keeping with the societal movement toward identifyinng differences as primary, underemphasizing our membership in humanity and our wholeness.
Given my longevity in this field, I am not comfortable returning to a term that can be used as a pejorative description. It has taken many years for the disabled to achieve parity with the able-bodied. When we live in a country with a President who used disability mannerisms as a political tool and a poor attempt at humor, we need to be reminded that we are all people with unique needs.
Early Intervention Services and Special Education for Parents and Grandparents 