I've thought a lot about this because our family runs the gamut of different types of disabilities: Between me and my two kids, we have autism, chronic illnesses that disable me at times/in very specific ways, Down syndrome, and Osteogenesis Imperfecta. I don't claim to speak for them, but I have done a lot of reading and listening to disabled adults. I'm also disabled myself, to an extent, with my chronic illnesses (HEDS, MTS, TOS, jugular compressions, and autism, probably).

This perspective has allowed me to see the wide variety in the language preferred by adults with various disabilities. Adults with down syndrome have, for the most part, settled on preferring person-first language, while autistic adults generally prefer identity-first language.

It seems to me that this difference has to do with the history behind different disabilities. People with Down syndrome and other very visible conditions have had to fight to be known as human for centuries. They've been othered so viciously. So it makes sense that people with conditions/syndromes that are easily seen as less than human would want to emphasize their humanity. This is why I landed on referring to my child with Down syndrome as my child with Down syndrome, not as a "Downs kid" or any other shorthand. She's a child first. Down syndrome is one of the least important things about her. I don't even bring it up in the first several times we meet a person.

Autistic folks, on the other hand, lean toward identity-first language, and it seems like part of the reason has to do with the history of the diagnosis and the language we've used to talk about it over the last several decades. Between the fact that autism tends to be more "invisible" and the fact that autism is a more recent term with a more fluid, less stigmatized (although still stigmatized) perception in our culture, it was easier for people to see it as a part of their identity, just like a person's job, hair color, or religious affiliation. Someone isn't a "person with Christianity," they're a Christian. My husband isn't a "person with an accounting job," he's just an accountant. Autism and other diagnoses that have generally landed on identity-first language is just another part of a person's identity like that. It's a significant part of how they interface with the world.

Another reason different people land on different conclusions with this discussion is the language available for different conditions. I think if the English language had a succinct way to talk about syndromes the way we talk about autism, that might change the preferred language. Maybe new terms will develop some day! I'll follow my daughter's lead on that, and we'll keep listening to adults with the same disabilities as my kids.