People with disabilities are, first and foremost, PEOPLE! They are children, friends, and family members who have their own individual strengths, opinions, and interests. In the field of special education, we use particular language to speak about people with disabilities to make sure we afford each person dignity and respect, and one way is using person first language. That means putting the person before the disability – instead of saying disabled student or autistic student, for example, we say ‘student with a disability’ or ‘student who has autism.’