Functional diversity or disability? Social and conceptual challenges of the new educational paradigms ( ¿Diversidad funcional o discapacidad? Retos sociales y conceptuales de los nuevos paradigmas educativos )

Abstract

Before discussing what functional diversity is, it is important to know the terms that refer to it in our language, in this case Spanish, as well as the most appropriate ones and the ones we should eliminate from our vocabulary because they are pejorative. Why is the term with which we refer to people who belong to this group so important? There may be people who think that it does not matter which term is used to refer to individuals with functional diversity and that what really matters is the way they are treated and our attitudes towards them. They are not wrong, but reality is constructed largely unconsciously based on a society’s language usage. Therefore, we can assert that using a given word will directly affect our conception of the object or subject to which we are referring when we use that word. Why are there different ways to understand and address this issue? Functional diversity or disability? Which is the right term? What do the experts say?