**1. Introduction**

It is strongly supported that the involvement with the persons who encounter various problems due to certain disabilities in no way can be claimed to be a philanthropic pursuit nor to be limited only to this form of support. It is true that a support based on volunteering work includes organization of social gatherings for disabled persons in order to strengthen their belief in their capacity for work, their ability to behave independently, to be included in the workforce of their country and enjoy the recognition of their environment as concerns the positive traits of their character (Pato,B.,2010)

Evidently, the measures which should be taken by official state services in the line with the expressed support of ordinary people not only will contribute to the relief of persons in need, but, also, will support national efforts to meet the crucial situation as a result of the economic crisis almost worldwide.

The Employment and Social Affairs Directory of EU, in a survey on disability matters (2007) identified that the 74% of the EU27 population thinks that more people with disabilities are needed in the work place. The crucial point of the employment indicators, and the involvement of persons with disabilities in the labour market is the disputable figures of prevalence

A survey has been, also, conducted by my research team almost two years ago,for this study among a randomly selected sample of 138 persons concisted of 70 males and 68 females aged between 25 to 37 years old employeed in small and medium enterprises (SME) .The problem statement was:*" It is claimed that more people with disabilities are required in our today's labour market. Do you agree?"* Please tick one of the following five options .The responses are shown in the following table 1.

Consequently, it is very promising that an increasing interest in recruiting persons with disabilities to the workforse will be an effective treatment of these persons who constitute the "major minority" as it will be proved in the following pages of this paper. Besides, there are plenty of jobs ranging from laborers, gardeners and upholsterers through auxiliary services to unskilled workers. It is clear that to achieve these goals, persons with disabilities are required to attend tailor-made training courses supplied by specific schools with the use of educational tools adapted to meet the learning requirements of these individuals. From

Language Disabilities: Myths and Misconceptions vs. Reality 5

As seen in the above table, the difference between the traditional terms usage and the purely scientific ones is very important in communication. The use of terms not easily understood or creating confusion may have serious impacts on the lives of persons with disabilities. For example, the use of the terms handicapped, exceptional. retarded and other result to confusion. It is, certainly, for this reason that the most authentic world organizations refer to persons with disabilities The United Nations Organization (UNO) in 2006, the World Health Organization (WHO) in 2001, the Council of Europe in 2006, and the Employment and Social Affairs of EU27 in 2010 define persons of any form of impairment as disability .The paradox about the terminology used is that most of the member countries of these world organizations, though signatories of the relative agreements continue to use

Presumably, they stick to the traditional terms which have been in use since decades, instead of using the scientific terms which from the communicative point of view are more effective. It is, therefore, important that definitions used to describe persons of any sort of impairments should be universally accepted to ensure clear understanding. **In science,** there is not a matter of **traditional pursuit,** but a **purely scientific discourse. Tradition is a longestablished way of defining the various terms related to persons with disabilities. On the other hand, scientific ways of defining terms conform with the principles or methods** 

During the early years in the history of "Special Education" various scientists, mainly psychologists, classified people into groups according to their disabilities. As a result of this movement, the following categories have been registered by Heward & Ortansky.

The lack of linguists in the process of defining the various impairments is obvious and has resulted to the creation of misunderstandings among everybody concerned with special education A typical example of the confusion created by the variety of definitions concerning the various disabilities among the EU27 countries is the dicision of the European Union to assign to the Brunel University (Mablett, D.,2009) to perform a comparative analysis of the definitions of disability used in the social security and employment area

What is astonishing in the whole defining process is that the predominant term of these persons with disabilities is **exceptional persons.** A simple survey in five on-line dictionaries of English Language randomly selected revealed the confusion the term **exceptional** creates to parents, educators, medical people and others because the form exceptional has

terminology which was adopted many decades ago.

**used in describing specific situations.** 

• Speech and Language Disorders

across the European Union member states

contrasting meanings as explained in the dictionaries:

• Learning Disabilities • Emotional Disturbance

• Hearing Impairment • Visual Impairment • Physical Handicaps • Mental Retardation • Behavior Disorders

(1984)

the economic point of view it is more interesting to pay for increasing the productivity of the work force rather than paying unemployment benefits which will provide social benefits to disabled individuals but will not produce any economic output.


Table 1. People with disabilities accepted in the work place . Sourse: Author's research team
