ABSTRACT
People with learning disabilities don’t know what self-advocacy means. Broken down it means speaking up for yourself . . . it means people must listen to me.
(Downer, cited in Goodley, 2000; 80, 81)
Learning disability is diffi cult to defi ne as it means many different things to different people. It is, however, defi ned in the literature and in legislation, for example (DH, 2001). The term is relatively new and replaced negative terminology such as ‘mentally handicapped’ which has links to charity as it literally states that they were ‘cap in hand’ (Gates, 2002). Learning disability is a term used in professional senses and as a political term, where it emphasises disability by society. The term has been rejected
by the People First organisation, who prefer the term ‘people with a learning diffi culty’. Internationally, the terms change, but what appears to be emerging is the use of the term ‘intellectual disability’.
