AFAIK, "disabled" is passe in AE and considered politically incorrect these days. What passes for "disabled" in BE has been called "challenged" in AE: physically/mentally challenged. They are also (and more recently) called "differently abled" so as not to focus on their disability but on whatever abilities they might have.

Yes. I don't think "handicapped" has been in use for quite a while in AE. It got supplanted by disabled, which got supplanted by challenged, which got supplanted by differently abled. Who knows what's next.

Ok, so that would seem to confirm an 'archaic' style tag for all the handicapped entries.

I wrote to Andrew Solomon, author of the book "Far from the Tree", and asked him. This is what he said:

There are several relevant discussions in the archives about "handicapped" being superseded by "disabled", e.g. :

yes, but papousek specifically asked about AE. Solomon is American *edit* and so is #23 in the thread linked above

I would say yes, 'handicapped' is older usage, more outmoded, and more likely to be experienced as thoughtlessly offensive, than 'disabled.' I would support marking it [dated] in LEO, and I support the suggested additional entries.

Yes, 'persons with disabilities' ('... cancer / Down's syndrome / schizophrenia / AIDS / PTSD' / you name it) is the most recent and most PC way to put any of these categories, putting shared personhood (positive, inclusive) before categories associated with disease (negative, divisive). People writing longer texts, especially in academia, will be expected to know that.

(You wrote to Andrew Solomon? Wow, that's like the time Marianne wrote to Michael Mosley. Yay you. (-: )

However, 'persons with ...' is usually too long for signs or concise informational contexts. That's why the wheelchair symbol is often used in place of any words at all, and when there needs to be a single word, that word is now indeed 'accessible.'

So yes, the least bad word for people is still probably 'disabled' -- in AE as well.

As for terms such as 'challenged' and 'differently abled' --

Yes, those are of course also occasionally seen in contexts seeking to avoid negativity. But even more often, they seem to be seized on as terms of ridicule by people mocking PC language -- probably, in fact, more than they ever really caught on among academics or people who work with people with disabilities.

Also, my hunch is that those terms tend to be used somewhat more in the context of intellectual / cognitive disability -- or, in the context of physical disability, in contexts such as athletic competition. (Cf. Special Olympics, Paralympics, etc.)

So in my experience, while such terms do exist, or have at times existed in the course of various changing trends in inclusive language, they don't really tend to come up as much just in basic information about wheelchair access. They belong to a different register.

I'd written to him before after having read his book, and he'd answered, so I had his e-mail address and he answered almost immediately ...

Re #9: So in my experience, while such terms do exist ... - Would you care to elaborate what exactly that experience comprises, hm? I'm only asking because although I myself am not on a professional level dealing with the OP's subject matter, I live with a person who is "differently abled" (my girlfriend's daughter), but I also live with a person (my girlfriend) who deals with this subject on a professional level as a special ed teacher. It is from her that I get most of my terminology and my "knowledge" about these things, and to my knowledge, "differently abled" tends to be used not mockingly or as ridicule, but as a "more sensitive" way of dealing with the issues of the "disabled." Then again, maybe California is different from Texas or even from the rest of the country in that respect (as it is in so many others).

Useful conversation, thanks everyone (especially penguin and Andrew Solomon!!).

Ok, I started a 'wrong entry' thread as well for the entries with the word handicapped

Disabled people

Right, borrowing from hm--us's previous suggested new entries in the thread linked to by Marianne in #6, and taking into account that the German speakers here and in this thread related discussion: handicapped (various) - behindert imply that there's a similar debate in German surrounding the appropriateness of disabled people/die Behinderten, then here are some proposed new entries, and an alteration to an old entry.

Im Deutschen würde ich von einer Verwendung des Begriffs "die Behinderten" oder "Behinderte" dringend abraten, das erinnert an die Euthanasie durch Nationalsozialisten. Heute spricht man von "Menschen mit Behinderung", "Personen mit Behinderung" oder "behinderte Menschen" (so heißt auch eine Zeitung in Österreich). Wenn möglich, versucht man zu differenzieren, also "Gehbehinderte", "Sehbehinderte", "Blinde", "Taube", "Hörbehinderte" oder "Personen mit Lernschwierigkeiten" zu sagen. Hat die Behinderung einen Grad von mehr als 50 (auch 50%) - dazu gibt es einen komplizierten Schlüssel -, spricht man auch von "Schwerbehinderten". Dieser Status ist mit sozialrechtlichen Vorteilen verbunden. In der Sonderpädagogik gibt es den Begriff der "Schwerstbehinderung", hier handelt es sich um multiple Beeinträchtigungen, die eine besondere Form der Betreuung notwendig machen. Im Zusammenhang sind auch die Begriffe "barrierefrei", "barrierefreier Eingang", "barrierefreier Zugang" zu erwägen.

Die wenigsten haben deine überpolitisierte Phantasie. Ideologiebefreite Menschen machen mit "Behinderte" genausowenig falsch wie mit "Putzfrauen" oder "Ausländern".

At the risk of repeating something I might have said in any of the other existing threads, what occurs to me as most important to mention now is that while 'handicapped' is no longer preferred in written contexts, or other PC-sensitive contexts such as education, social work, and research, it is not in the least 'veraltet' in everyday conversation.

(In my experience as someone without a physical disability, but with elderly friends), the most obvious and still quite common use is to refer to parking, the reserved spaces with the blue wheelchair symbol (which is sometimes hard to see until you're upon it). Anyone could quite easily say today 'That one's handicapped, you can't park there.' It's not old-fashioned in the least, just as a sort of shorthand.

So I would be inclined to mark it maybe even [ugs.], but definitely not [veralt.]. Maybe the more recent, less deprecated ones could be given a more positive marking such as [fachspr.].