Types of Disabilities
Below is a list of some common disabilities. This is not a complete list and while we commonly serve students with these types of disabilities, we also serve students who have disabilities that are not listed here, which could include a new type of disability, a chronic condition, or an athletic injury or short-term disability.
Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)
While ADHD is a separate condition, students with ADHD use some of the same accommodations and instructional strategies as those with learning disabilities. ADHD is a persistent pattern of inattention or hyperactivity/impulsivity manifested in academic, employment, or social situations. It is marked in school settings by careless mistakes and disorganized work. Students often have difficulty concentrating on and completing tasks, frequently shifting from one uncompleted activity to another. In social situations, inattention may be apparent by frequent shifts in conversation, poor listening comprehension, and not following the details or rules of games and other activities. Symptoms of hyperactivity may take the form of restlessness and difficulty with quiet activities. ADHD arises during childhood and is attributed neither to gross neurological, sensory, language, or motor impairment nor to mental retardation or severe emotional disturbance.
Autism Spectrum Disorders and Asperger's Syndrome
The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) defines autism as "a developmental disability significantly affecting verbal and non-verbal communication, and social interactions.." Students with Asperger's Syndrome have average or above average intelligence and may exhibit some symptoms common to Autism Spectrum Disorders such as:
- Impairment of social interactions
- Impaired language or communication skills
- Repetitive behavior
- A restricted range of interests
- Poor motor skills
Please follow this Asperger's Syndrome link for more information and you can fill out the Asperger's Syndrome Intake Questionnaire.
Hearing Impairments
The causes and degrees of hearing loss vary across the deaf and hard of hearing community, as do methods of communication and attitudes toward deafness. In general, there are three types of hearing loss:
- Conductive loss affects the sound-conducting paths of the outer and middle ear. The degree of loss can be decreased through the use of a hearing aid or by surgery. People with conductive loss might speak softly, hear better in noisy surroundings than people with normal hearing, and might experience ringing in their ears.
- Sensorineural loss affects the inner ear and the auditory nerve and can range from mild to profound. People with sensorineural loss might speak loudly, experience greater high-frequency loss, have difficulty distinguishing consonant sounds, and not hear well in noisy environments.
- Mixed loss results from both a conductive and sensorineural loss.
Given the close relationship between oral language and hearing, students with hearing loss might also have speech impairments. One’s age at the time of the loss determines whether one is prelingually deaf (hearing loss before oral language acquisition) or adventitiously deaf (normal hearing during language acquisition). Those born deaf or who become deaf as very young children might have more limited speech development.
Learning Disabilities (LD)
Learning disabilities are neurologically based conditions that interfere with the acquisition, storage, organization, and use of skills and knowledge. They are identified by deficits in academic functioning and in processing memory, auditory, visual, and linguistic information. The diagnosis of a learning disability in an adult requires documentation of at least average intellectual functioning along with a deficit in one or more of the following areas:
- auditory processing
- visual processing
- information processing speed
- abstract and general reasoning
- memory (long-term, short-term, visual, auditory)
- spoken and written language skills
- reading skills
- mathematical skills
- visual spatial skills
- motor skills
- executive functioning (planning)
Some considerations:
- A learning disability is not a disorder that a student "grows out of." It is a permanent disorder affecting how students with normal or above-average intelligence process incoming information, outgoing information, or both.
- Learning disabilities are often inconsistent. They may be manifested in only one specific academic area, such as math or foreign language. There might be problems in grade school, none in high school, and again in college.
- Learning disabilities are not the same as mental retardation or emotional disorders.
- Common accommodations for students with learning disabilities are alternative print formats, taped lectures, note-takers, alternative ways of completing assignments, early syllabus, exam modifications, priority registration, and study skills and strategies training.
Mobility Impairments
Mobility impairments range in severity from limitations on stamina to paralysis. Some mobility impairments are caused by conditions present at birth while others are the result of illness or physical injury. Injuries cause different types of mobility impairments, depending on what area of the spine is affected.
- Quadriplegia, paralysis of the extremities and trunk, is caused by a neck injury. Students with quadriplegia have limited or no use of their arms and hands and often use electric wheelchairs. Paraplegia, paralysis of the lower extremities and the lower trunk, is caused by an injury to the mid-back. Students often use a manual wheelchair and have full movement of arms and hands.
- Amputation is the removal of one or more limbs, sometimes caused by trauma or another condition.
- Arthritis is the inflammation of the body’s joints, causing pain, swelling, and difficulty in body movement.
- Back disorders can limit a student’s ability to sit, stand, walk, bend, or carry objects. They include, but are not limited to, degenerative disk disease, scoliosis, and herniated disks.
- Cerebral palsy is the result of damage to the brain prior to or shortly after birth. It can prevent or inhibit walking and cause a lack of muscle coordination, spasms, and speech difficulty.
- Neuromuscular disorders include a variety of disorders, such as muscular dystrophy, multiple sclerosis, and ataxia, that result in degeneration and atrophy of muscle or nerve tissues.
Psychiatric Disabilities
Students with psychiatric disabilities have experienced significant emotional difficulty that generally has required treatment in a hospital setting. With appropriate treatment, often combining medications, psychotherapy, and support, the majority of psychiatric disorders are cured or controlled. The National Institute of Mental Health estimates that one in five people in the United States have some form of psychiatric disability, but only one in five persons with a diagnosable psychiatric disorder ever seeks treatment due to the strong stigmatization involved. Below are brief descriptions of some common psychiatric disabilities.
- Depression is a major disorder that can begin at any age. Major depression may be characterized by a depressed mood most of each day, a lack of pleasure in most activities, thoughts of suicide, insomnia, and feelings of worthlessness or guilt.
- Bipolar disorder (manic-depressive disorder) causes a person to experience periods of mania and depression. In the manic phase, a person might experience inflated self-esteem and a decreased need to sleep.
- Anxiety disorders can disrupt a person’s ability to concentrate and cause hyperventilation, a racing heart, chest pains, dizziness, panic, and extreme fear.
Schizophrenia can cause a person to experience, at some point in the illness, delusions and hallucinations.
Psychological Disability Support
Systemic Disabilities
Systemic disabilities are conditions affecting one or more of the body’s systems. These include the respiratory, immunological, neurological, and circulatory systems. There are many kinds of systemic impairments, varying significantly in their effects and symptoms; below are brief descriptions of some of the more common types.
- Cancer is a malignant growth that can affect any part of the body. Treatment can be time-consuming, painful, and sometimes result in permanent disability.
- Chemical dependency is considered a disabling condition when it is documented that a person has received treatment for a drug or alcohol addiction and is not currently using. Chemical dependency can cause permanent cognitive impairments and carries with it a great deal of stigma.
- Diabetes mellitus causes a person to lose the ability to regulate blood sugar. People with diabetes often need to follow a strict diet and may require insulin injections. During a diabetic reaction, a person may experience confusion, sudden personality changes, or loss of consciousness. In extreme cases, diabetes can also cause vision loss, cardiovascular disease, kidney failure, stroke, or necessitate the amputation of limbs.
- Epilepsy/seizure disorder causes a person to experience a loss of consciousness. Episodes, or seizures, vary from short absence or "petit mal" seizures to the less common "grand mal." Seizures are frequently controlled by medications and are most often not emergency situations.
- Epstein Barr virus/chronic fatigue syndrome is an autoimmune disorder which causes extreme fatigue, loss of appetite, and depression. Physical or emotional stress may adversely affect a person with this condition.
- Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV+), which causes AIDS, inhibits one’s ability to fight off illness and infections. Symptoms vary greatly. People with HIV or AIDS are often stigmatized.
- Lyme’s disease is a multisystemic condition, which can cause paralysis, fatigue, fever, dermatitis, sleeping problems, memory dysfunction, cognitive difficulties, and depression.
- Lupus erythematosis can cause inflammatory lesions, neurological problems, extreme fatigue, persistent flu-like symptoms, impaired cognitive ability, and connective tissue dysfunction, and mobility impairments. Lupus most often affects young women.
- Multiple chemical sensitivity (MCS) often results from prolonged exposure to chemicals. A person with MCS becomes increasingly sensitive to chemicals found in everyday environments. Reactions can be caused by cleaning products, pesticides, petroleum products, vehicle exhaust, tobacco smoke, room deodorizers, perfumes, and scented personal products. Though reactions vary, nausea, rashes, light-headedness, and respiratory distress are common to MCS.
- Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a progressive neurological condition with a variety of symptoms, such as loss of strength, numbness, vision impairments, tremors, and depression. The intensity of MS symptoms can vary greatly; one day a person might be extremely fatigued and the next day feel strong. Extreme temperatures can also adversely affect a person with MS.
- Renal disease/failure can result in loss of bladder control, extreme fatigue, pain, and toxic reactions that can cause cognitive difficulties. Some people with renal disease are on dialysis and have to adhere to a rigid schedule.
Traumatic Brain Injury
Though not always visible and sometimes seemingly minor, brain injury is complex. It can cause physical, cognitive, social, and vocational changes that affect an individual for a short period of time or permanently. Depending on the extent and location of the injury, symptoms caused by a brain injury vary widely. Some common results are seizures, loss of balance or coordination, difficulty with speech, limited concentration, memory loss, and loss of organizational and reasoning skills.
Vision Impairments
Approximately 500,000 Americans have vision impairments to the extent that they are considered "legally blind." There are three degrees of vision loss: 1) visual acuity of 20/200—the legally blind person can see at 20 feet what the average-sighted person can see at 200; 2) low vision—limited or diminished vision that cannot be corrected with standard lenses; and 3) partial sight—the field of vision is impaired because of an illness, a degenerative syndrome, or trauma. Only two percent of the people with vision impairments are totally blind; most blind people have some amount of usable vision.
|
