Elvin Ng Corrects IG Caption After Wheelchair User Informs The Star On The Correct Term To Use

On Mar 2, Elvin Ng, 41, uploaded a post on his Instagram, revealing that he’d collaborated with a local artist recently on a series of paintings. Elvin, who's known to be an avid collector of art, shared more about his collaborator in the caption — local artist Allan Tan.

"He had [polio] when he was 3 and had to be on wheelchair since, but he's always been brave and positive, and never gave up on his passion for art and sports like basketball,” Elvin captioned.

He went on to share that he was inspired by Allan’s “Chiaroscuro series” of paintings, which made use of contrasted "light and shades” to achieve a sense of volume and a 3D effect. They used that as a base for their collaboration, and eventually came up with the three paintings shown in Elvin’s post.

However. in an earlier version of Elvin’s caption, it appeared that the actor had used the word “wheelchair-bound” to describe the artist.

A quick lesson

A netizen then took to the comments section to share with Elvin (very respectfully, might we add) that there are other terms to use to describe wheelchair users besides “wheelchair-bound”.

"Hey Elvin. With all respect, let's not use 'wheelchair-bound' to describe wheelchair users. We can get off our wheelchair sometimes, like for a bath, or to sleep on the bed, and are not completely 'bound' to the wheelchair,” said netizen wrote.

Less than an hour after the netizen left his comment, Elvin replied, thanking the netizen for correcting him, and amended his caption.

"Thank you for correcting me, I appreciate it,” Elvin wrote.

And there we have it. Having a civilised and educational conversation on the Internet isn’t that difficult (or rare), right?

Photos: Elvin Ng/Instagram