Disability Discourse - Tumblr Posts

i understand where the frustration of ppl using labels that r not meant 4 them and talking over fully nonverbal ppl, aside from things like that it feels strange 2 me 2 police the language ppl w/ various speech issues may use 2 describe themselves no? also the original post doesn't acknowledge ppl w/ fluency issues, i 4 example lose fluency sometimes and w/ that in mind it feels rly weird 2 me that some1 would get mad at me 4 "using the wrong term" 4 my speaking problems bc of me losing fluency? not sure if im explaining this well but im bad at talking at the best of times anyway p much just relying on phrases ive heard b4 and changing them slightly 2 kinda fit what im trying 2 say and since this post is literally abt ppl having speech problems i would hope no1 would get mad at me 4 that

apparently we r doing this again

Selective Mutism: an anxiety disorder. The inability to talk is caused by social anxiety due to the people and/or situation around the selectively mute individual. Often starts in childhood.

Speech Loss: a term for being unable to speak for a certain period of time, usually due to autism-related reasons (e.g. being overwhelmed or burnt out). Can overlap with Selective Mutism, the disorder, but it is not the same thing. (For one, SL is a trait; SM is a whole disorder.)

Nonverbal/Nonspeaking: a term for people who are always or almost always unable to talk. If you're unable to talk for an hour/day/week, you're not "going nonverbal"; you're "losing speech". If you've never been able to talk more than a few utterances, that's nonverbal.

Semiverbal/Semispeaking: a term for people who struggle greatly to speak to communicate. This might include taking awhile to form sentences, speaking with very few words, relying on echolalia, using gestures to communicate, and not always making sense to others.

Hyperverbal: people who speak more than what's typical, though we can still experience speech loss. This can include things like having a large vocabulary, using more words than necessary/usual to say something, talking to ourselves, talking for the sake of talking, using a lot of non-communicative echolalia, not realizing we're talking, or rambling often.

A Note: over time, your place on the verbalizing spectrum (nonverbal, semiverbal, average, hyperverbal) CAN change, but that's not, like, "oh i was hyperverbal this week and nonverbal last week"; it's about overarching patterns. Additionally, Selective Mutism does not inherently put someone at a certain spot on the verbalizing spectrum.

Friendly reminder that generally speaking

Disorder/condition/disease

DOES NOT EQUAL

Disability

“(1) Disability

The term ‘disability’ means, with respect to an individual—

(A) a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities of such individual;

(B) a record of such an impairment; or

(C) being regarded as having such an impairment (as described in paragraph (3)).

(2) Major life activities

(A) In general

For purposes of paragraph (1), major life activities include, but are not limited to, caring for oneself, performing manual tasks, seeing, hearing, eating, sleeping, walking, standing, lifting, bending, speaking, breathing, learning, reading, concentrating, thinking, communicating, and working.” Source