12 Common courtesies for people with disabilities

By Eric Minton

Following are some etiquette tips for interacting with people with disabilities.

1. Listen to the person with the disability. Don't make assumptions about what that person can or can’t do. Let them tell you.

2. When speaking with a person with a disability, talk directly to that person, not through his or her companion. This is true whether the person has a mobility impairment, a mental impairment, is blind or deaf and uses an interpreter.

3. Maintain eye contact, even if he or she is blind. If you are engaged in a long conversation with a person in a wheelchair, sit down or even kneel or squat to achieve eye contact.

4. Extend common courtesies to people with disabilities as you would anyone else: shake hands or hand over business cards. If the person can’t shake your hand or grasp your card, they will tell you. Don’t be ashamed of your attempt, however.

5. If the customer has a speech impairment and you are having trouble understanding what he or she is saying, ask them to repeat rather than pretend you understood. The former is respectful and leads to accurate communication; the latter is belittling and leads to embarrassment, usually for you.

6. Feel free to offer assistance to a person with a disability, but wait until your offer is accepted before you help. Don’t automatically push a wheelchair or grab a blind person’s arm to guide them through a door, across the street or anywhere.

7. When offering assistance to a person who is blind, allow him or her to take your arm. Speak to them to let them know you are nearby, and if you must depart, excuse yourself.

8. Speak in a normal voice, unless the impairment is a hearing loss. Don’t raise your voice or talk as if you were addressing a child.

9. Do not lean on a person’s wheelchair. That’s invading not only his space but his person.

10. Do not pet, play with or otherwise distract a seeing-eye dog or service dog. That dog is doing a job and you are interfering. In some states, it’s illegal.

11. Relax. Use your normal vocabulary. It’s OK to say to a person in a wheelchair, “Let’s take a walk.” It’s OK to say “See you later” to a person who is blind. Trying to correct yourself only leads to more discomfort.

12. It’s OK to feel nervous or uncomfortable around people with disabilities, and it’s OK to admit that. It’s human to feel that way at first. When you encounter these situations, think “person” first instead of focusing on the disability, and through eye contact, common courtesies, and listening, you will eventually relax.

Eric Minton, editor-in-chief of THE LOOP, is a nationally known writer in disability issues, having written more than 80 articles on the Americans with Disabilities Act, assistive technology and disability culture for 40 publications. A former member of the communications subcommittee of the U.S. President’s Committee on Employment of People with Disabilities, Minton has a Master’s of Humanities in Disabilities Studies. For more information, visit www.ericminton.com.