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I saw this article on Gizmodo Japan:

> [だれもがスマホの便利さを享受できる第一歩。視覚障 **がい**
> 者がiPhone操作を学べるアプリ](http://www.gizmodo.jp/2015/06/iphone_visually_support.html)

Obviously, this is 視覚障 **害** 者 (or possibly, 視覚障 **碍** 者). It is in the title
of the article, as well as several places within the body of the article.

Why is the 害 written in hiragana? Is there some kind of stigma, or political
incorrectness behind using 障害者?
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question
kanji hiragana orthography
Why is hiragana used in the middle of this compound word? (障害者 vs 障がい者)
Some people argue that the use of "障害者" is politically incorrect, because the
kanji "害" has the meaning like "to harm". Because of this, there has been
shift to "障がい", especially in media and official documents. It seems [障がい was
first seen in
1990s](http://crd.ndl.go.jp/reference/modules/d3ndlcrdentry/index.php?page=ref_view&id=1000117824)
on newspapers. On the other hand, some people think that it is oversensitive,
and that the mixture of kanji and hiragana is weird. Anyway there has been
some arguments over this (try, for example, searching google for
[障害+表記+site:go.jp](https://www.google.co.jp/search?&q=%E9%9A%9C%E5%AE%B3+%E8%A1%A8%E8%A8%98+site%3Ago.jp)).

Historically, (as you probably know), 障害 was written as 障碍 or 障礙． Here, "碍"
(=礙), as used in [碍子](http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E7%A2%8D%E5%AD%90), simply
means obstruction, without the negative tones that 害 has. In accordance with
the introduction of
[常用漢字](http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%B8%B8%E7%94%A8%E6%BC%A2%E5%AD%97),
which neither 碍 nor 礙 is listed on, those kanji-s were eventually replaced by
害. Because of this, some people (including me, by the way) think that using
"障碍" or "障礙" will settle the problem. Newspapers will never use this for now
because it isn't listed in the joyo-kanji list, and I don't know if there is
any movement towards listing them. It was at least actually discussed in
national diet
([question](http://www.shugiin.go.jp/internet/itdb_shitsumon.nsf/html/shitsumon/a167001.htm)
and [answer to
that](http://www.shugiin.go.jp/internet/itdb_shitsumon.nsf/html/shitsumon/b167001.htm)).

I don't know what ratio of the people think it is (politically incorrect vs
not a problem) or (important vs irrelevant vs I don't care).
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answer