13 Categories of
Disabilities
Kathleen S. Whittier
7/1/2016
Kathleen S. Whittier
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TERMS USED IN
SPECIAL EDUCATION
• Exceptional — used to describe the
range of students who receive
special services
• Disability — a limitation within an
individual
• Handicap — a limitation imposed on
an individual by the environment or
attitude of others
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• Remember: A disability is not
necessarily a handicap.
• Remember: Use people-first
language; “Mary has a
disability” rather than “Mary is a
disabled student.”
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(zz) Student with a
disability
• means a student who has not
attained the age of 21 prior to
September 1st and who is entitled to
attend public schools and who,
because of mental, physical or
emotional reasons, has been
identified as having a disability and
who requires special services and
programs approved by the
department.
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AREAS OF ELIGIBILITY FOR SPECIAL
EDUCATION AND RELATED SERVICES
ACCORDING TO IDEA and Part 200
1. Autism
8. Other Health Impairment
2. Deaf-Blindness
9. Serious Emotional
Disturbance
3. Deafness
4. Hearing Impairment
10. Specific Learning
Disability
5. Mental Retardation
11. Speech or Language
Impairment
6. Multiple Disabilities
12.Traumatic Brain Injury
7. Orthopedic Impairment
13.
Visual Impairment
including Blindness
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Autism
• a developmental disability
significantly affecting verbal
and nonverbal communication
and social interaction,
• generally evident before age 3,
that adversely affects a
student’s educational
performance.
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Other characteristics often
associated with autism are
• engagement in repetitive activities
and stereotyped movements,
• resistance to environmental change
or change in daily routines, and
• unusual responses to sensory
experiences
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• The term does not apply if a
student's educational performance is
adversely affected primarily because
the student has an emotional
disturbance
• A student who manifests the
characteristics of autism after age 3
could be diagnosed as having autism
if the criteria in this paragraph are
otherwise satisfied.
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Symptoms of autism include
(IDEA):
• disturbances in the rate of appearance of
physical, social, and language skills.
• Abnormal responses to sensation,
• absent or delayed speech and language
• specific thinking capabilities are present,
• abnormal ways of relating to people, objects,
and events.
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Deafness
• a hearing impairment that is so
severe that the student is
impaired in processing
linguistic information through
hearing, with or without
amplification, that adversely
affects a student’s educational
performance.
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Deaf-blindness
• concomitant hearing and visual
impairments, the combination of
which causes such severe
communication and other
developmental and educational
needs that they cannot be
accommodated in special education
programs solely for students with
deafness or students with blindness
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Serious Emotional
Disturbance
The federal definition
means a condition exhibiting
one or more of the following
characteristics over a long
period of time and to a marked
degree, which adversely affects
education performance.
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a.
The child exhibits an inability to learn that cannot
be explained by intellectual, sensory, and health
factors.
b.
The child exhibits an inability to build or
maintain satisfactory interpersonal relationships
with peers and teachers.
c.
The child exhibits inappropriate types of behavior
or feelings under normal circumstances.
d.
The child exhibits a tendency to develop physical
symptoms or fears associated with personal or
school problems.
e.
The child exhibits a general pervasive mood of
unhappiness or depression.
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Emotional disturbance
Part 200
• a condition exhibiting one or
more of the following
characteristics over a long
period of time and to a marked
degree that adversely affects a
student’s educational
performance:
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• (i) an inability to learn that cannot be explained by
intellectual, sensory, or health factors.
• (ii) an inability to build or maintain satisfactory
interpersonal relationships with peers and
teachers;
• (iii) inappropriate types of behavior or feelings
under normal circumstances;
• (iv) a generally pervasive mood of unhappiness or
depression; or
• (v) a tendency to develop physical symptoms or
fears associated with personal or school problems.
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• The term includes
schizophrenia. The term does
not apply to students who are
socially maladjusted, unless it
is determined that they have an
emotional disturbance
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Rate: How often the behavior occurs in a
given time period.
Intensity: The strength or magnitude of the
behavior.
Duration: The length of time a behavior
occurs.
Age-appropriate behavior: Refers to the
fact that some behaviors are considered
normal in children of a certain age but are
considered problematic when they persist
as the child ages or occur before they are
expected.
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Hearing impairment
• an impairment in hearing,
whether permanent or
fluctuating, that adversely
affects the child's educational
performance but that is not
included under the definition of
deafness
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SPECIFIC LEARNING
DISABILITIES
Federal definition: Student has a learning
disability if he or she does not achieve at
the proper age and ability levels and has a
severe discrepancy between achievement
and intellectual ability in one or more of
the following areas: oral expression,
listening comprehension, written
expression, basic reading skills, reading
comprehension, and mathematics
reasoning.
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State definition:
a disorder in one or more of the
basic psychological processes
involved in understanding or in
using language, spoken or
written, which manifests itself
in an imperfect ability to listen,
think, speak, read, write, spell,
or to do mathematical
calculations.
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The term includes such
conditions as perceptual
disabilities, brain injury, minimal
brain dysfunction, dyslexia and
developmental aphasia.
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The term does not include
learning problems that are
primarily the result of visual,
hearing or motor disabilities, of
mental retardation, of emotional
disturbance, or of
environmental, cultural or
economic disadvantage.
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• A student who exhibits a
discrepancy of 50 percent or
more between expected
achievement and actual
achievement determined on an
individual basis shall be deemed
to have a learning disability
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Key elements
• the federal definition emphasize that the
performance of students with learning
disabilities is often tied to the ability to
receive or express information.
• Identification: usually begins when the
classroom teacher notices a difference
between ability and the quality of work
that is being produced.
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Mental Retardation
• concept of intelligence is critical to the
definition of mental retardation and to our
characterization of all individuals with
varying abilities and disabilities.
• Subaverage intellectual functioning refers
to performance on one or more intelligence
tests resulting in an IQ score of 70 or
below (no longer listed as 1.5 deviations in
New York).
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• Adaptive behaviors are those social,
maturational, self-help, and
communicative acts that assist each
individual in adapting to the
demands of his or her environment.
• Manifestation during the
developmental period is justification
that mental retardation must be
present before the age of 18.
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Mental retardation
• significantly subaverage
general intellectual functioning,
existing concurrently with
deficits in adaptive behavior
and manifested during the
developmental period, that
adversely affects a student’s
educational performance
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Multiple Disabilities
IDEA defines multiple disabilities
as “concomitant impairments,
the combination of which
causes such severe educational
problems that they cannot be
accommodated in special
education programs solely for
one of the impairments.”
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Multiple disabilities(Part
200)
• concomitant impairments (such as
mental retardation-blindness, mental
retardation-orthopedic impairment,
etc.), the combination of which
cause such severe educational
needs that they cannot be
accommodated in a special
education program solely for one of
the impairments. The term does not
include deaf-blindness
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Other examples:
children born with CP have
mental retardation.
children with Down syndrome
experience congenital heart
problems.
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Orthopedic impairment
• a severe orthopedic impairment that
adversely affects a student's
educational performance.
• The term includes impairments
caused by congenital anomaly (e.g.,
clubfoot, absence of some member,
etc.),
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• impairments caused by disease (e.g.,
poliomyelitis, bone tuberculosis,
etc.), and
• impairments from other causes
(e.g., cerebral palsy, amputation, and
fractures or burns which cause
contractures).
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Other health-impairment
• having limited strength, vitality
or alertness, including a
heightened alertness to
environmental stimuli, that
results in limited alertness with
respect to the educational
environment, that is due to
chronic or acute health
problems,
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• including but not limited to a heart
condition, tuberculosis, rheumatic
fever, nephritis, asthma, sickle cell
anemia, hemophilia, epilepsy, lead
poisoning, leukemia, diabetes,
attention deficit disorder or
attention deficit hyperactivity
disorder or tourette syndrome, which
adversely affects a student's
educational performance
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Speech or language
impairment
a communication disorder, such
as stuttering, impaired
articulation, a language
impairment or a voice
impairment, that adversely
affects a student's educational
performance.
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Traumatic brain injury
• an acquired injury to the brain
caused by an external physical
force or by certain medical
conditions such as stroke,
encephalitis, aneurysm, anoxia
or brain tumors with resulting
impairments that adversely
affect educational performance.
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• The term includes open or
closed head injuries or brain
injuries from certain medical
conditions resulting in mild,
moderate or severe
impairments in one or more
areas,
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• including cognition, language,
memory, attention, reasoning,
abstract thinking, judgment,
problem solving, sensory,
perceptual and motor abilities,
psychosocial behavior, physical
functions, information
processing, and speech.
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• The term does not include
injuries that are congenital or
caused by birth trauma.
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Visual impairment
including blindness
• an impairment in vision that,
even with correction, adversely
affects a student's educational
performance. The term includes
both partial sight and blindness.
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Visual impairment
• includes all levels of vision
loss, from total blindness to
uncorrectable visual
limitations
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Legally blind
• means that even after
correction, a person has a
visual acuity of 20/200 or
worse in the better eye, or a
visual field no greater than
20 degrees.
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In 1991, the American Printing
House for the Blind reported that
51,813 students enrolled in
residential schools, public
schools, programs for the
multihandicapped, and
rehabilitation programs were
registered to receive assistance
for visual impairments.
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Visual impairment is much more
common among people aged 65
and older
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At Risk
• a wide range of biological and
environmental conditions that
increase the probability of
cognitive, social, affective, and
physical problems.
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