Disability Descriptions
A
ADHD
ADHD impacts a person’s ability to pay attention, stay still, or control their impulses. These difficulties affect functioning across multiple areas of someone’s life, including, but not limited to, home, school, and work. Symptoms may look different in children and adults.
Alzheimer’s Disease
Alzheimer’s disease is a condition where harmful proteins build up in someone’s brain that cause it to slowly shrink and its cells to slowly die. The main symptom is memory loss, but unclear thinking, trouble concentrating, poor judgment and decisions, difficulty planning and carrying out tasks, and mental health challenges like depression can also occur. Alzheimer’s disease is also a leading cause of dementia in older adults.
Amputation
Amputation refers to the partial or total surgical removal of any body part that is harmful to the rest of the body. Common body parts include arms, legs, and feet. Amputation can also be done on a body part that can’t remain on someone’s body after a severe accident.
Angelman Syndrome
Angelman Syndrome is a disability caused by a change in a specific chromosome that leads to a lack of specific protein, resulting in trouble with walking, talking, and performing simple everyday tasks. Symptoms present as a result are imbalance, trouble with movement, severe seizures, and sleep issues.
Apraxia of Speech (AOS)
Apraxia of speech in adults, otherwise known as adult acquired apraxia of speech and verbal apraxia in adults, is a disorder defined by an acquired problem in the brain’s planning to send messages to the mouth’s muscles. This causes unclear speech and difficulty in saying words out loud correctly, even when someone has a clear idea of what they want to say.
Arthritis
Arthritis affects the joints. It leads to pain, swelling, and stiffness. It commonly develops with age, and its symptoms often become more severe over time.
Articulation Disorder
Articulation disorder causes a child aged 4-5 years or older to struggle with making specific sounds or saying them correctly.
Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD)
Autism is a disability that affects development and social skills. Every person with autism is different, but common struggles are difficulty communicating with others and finding and keeping good, healthy relationships. They can also do specific things repeatedly and have focused, intense interests. They often have different reactions to stimuli. Symptoms can range from mild to severe.
B
Bipolar Disorder
Bipolar Disorder is a disorder recognized by episodes involving major shifts in mood, energy, and behavior. These episodes alternate between manic and depressive. Manic episodes cause high-energy, impulsive behavior, and unusually heightened moods, while depressive episodes cause the opposite – low-energy and unusually low moods. Each episode lasts for weeks or even months.
Blindness
Blindness is a term used to describe conditions that cause partial or complete loss of vision. Some blind people cannot see light at all. For a blind person, correction methods such as glasses, contacts, eye drops, medication, or surgery are not options for treatment because they can’t solve the problem.
C
Central Auditory Processing Disorder (CAPD)
Central Auditory Processing Disorder is a disability surrounding the sense of sound. People with this disability’s brains have trouble processing sound. They won’t be able to find where sounds are coming from, tell which sound is which in a place with multiple sources of sound, identify a sound’s patterns, identify what time each sound occurs, focus on sounds they need to hear above other noise, or hear sounds with poor quality.
Cerebral Palsy
Cerebral Palsy or CP is a disability that affects movement and weakens someone’s ability to keep their balance, talk, and hold their body. It is caused by brain damage before or right after birth. Symptoms affect each person differently based on how the brain is affected.
Childhood Apraxia of Speech (CAS)
Childhood apraxia of speech develops during childhood. Their brain struggles to send signals to their mouth to move the muscles. They have issues with mouth movements, even though they know what they wish to say in their mind.
Cluttering
Cluttering is a condition that causes someone to talk too fast or in quick, uneven bursts, making their speech hard to follow. Symptoms include mixing words, using filler words too much, and switching topics too quickly.
Color Blindness
Color blindness ranges from slight difficulty to the inability to notice color differences. The affected colors appear in pairs: red and green, or yellow and blue. Color blindness can also cause an inability to see any color.
D
Deaf-Blindness
Deaf-blindness is the partial or complete loss of both hearing and vision. As a result, their intake of audio and visual input is limited.
Dementia
Dementia involves a group of symptoms caused by diseases that affect the brain, most commonly in older adults. It involves gradual, ongoing memory loss along with problems in thinking and reasoning. Other symptoms can include trouble communicating, planning, and managing daily self-care.
Down Syndrome
Down Syndrome occurs when a person is born with one extra chromosome. It is a lifelong disability that causes delays in a person’s body and brain growth and causes some physical differences in them.
Dysarthria
Dysarthria develops when damage to the brain or nervous system weakens or impairs the muscles used for speech. As a result, they may slur their words due to the movement of their tongue or voice box.
Dyscalculia
Dyscalculia is a learning disability that makes someone unable to understand numbers and math. People with this disability process math information and concepts differently. They struggle in math-related classes. However, dyscalculia doesn’t affect intelligence or capability.
Dyslexia
Dyslexia is a reading disability that affects someone’s ability to process sounds and language. Their brains can’t translate sounds to letters and words. They have unique differences in language processing compared to people who don’t have dyslexia.
Dysgraphia
Dysgraphia is defined by how it affects a person’s ability to put their thoughts into words. This continues even after they have been taught writing skills.
E
Epilepsy
Epilepsy is a disability, and its main symptom is repeated seizures. These happen suddenly and cause shaking, passing out, staring into space, confusion, or changes in someone’s feelings or actions.
Expressive Language Disorder (ELD)
Expressive Language Disorder involves challenges with communicating thoughts and ideas. People with this disorder also often fail to make it known that they understand what someone is saying to them. ELD affects all types of communication, not just speech. Children who have it developmentally show signs of trouble with vocabulary, complex sentences, word memory and definitions, and expressing their thoughts in writing.
F
Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD)
Fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, also known as FASD, describes a number of problems caused to a baby because of alcohol exposure before birth. Effects a baby undergoes include changes in appearance, behavior, and thinking patterns. FASD is often a lifelong condition.
Fibromyalgia
Fibromyalgia is a long-term illness characterized by continuous and persistent pain in the muscles and soft tissues throughout the body. Possible areas affected include the neck, shoulders, back, chest, buttocks, arms, and legs. The level of pain can be worse in the morning and night, and when someone moves, is in cold weather, is worried, or stressed.
Focal Seizures
Focal seizures are seizures that happen in only one part of someone’s brain and body. Most of the time, symptoms of focal seizures occur only on the side of the brain and body the seizure started in, but it is possible for them to spread to the other side. Symptoms include a shift in awareness, behavior, or sensation, as well as unusual movements.
Fragile X Syndrome
Fragile X Syndrome is a disability seen when there is a change in a gene on someone’s X chromosome. Symptoms include learning delays, thinking difficulties, and behavioral challenges. It can manifest in different ways at different levels.
G
Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD)
Generalized Anxiety Disorder is a disorder that causes constant and uncontrollable fear, stress, and worry about everything, including everyday things and even things that do not usually cause anxiety. GAD can develop at any age.
Generalized Seizures
Generalized seizures are seizures that start or look like they started in all areas of someone’s brain at the same time. Symptoms include passing out, also known as losing consciousness, and uncontrollable whole-body movements.
H
Hearing Loss
Hearing loss means a person either can’t hear or has difficulty hearing. This condition occurs at birth or during childhood. The effect can be mild to severe and causes issues with talking, learning, or engaging in social interaction.
Hyperacusis
Hyperacusis is when someone is especially sensitive to specific sounds. Sounds that are considered normal volume are perceived as extremely loud by people with hyperacusis and can even hurt their ears.
I
Intellectual Disability
Intellectual disability affects thinking, learning, and problem-solving. Socializing and taking care of themselves is also a challenge for people with this condition.
L
Landau-Kleffner Syndrome
Landau-Kleffner Syndrome is a disability that, through irregular electrical functioning, triggers the brain to cause seizures and presents difficulty with talking and understanding the language they speak.
Learning Disability
Learning disability is an internal condition that causes difficulty with subjects such as reading, writing, math, or speaking. This happens even though people with learning disabilities are just as smart as or smarter than their peers. This is a lifelong disability with symptoms ranging from mild to severe.
Lisp
A lisp is a disability that affects the clarity of someone’s speech. Someone with a lisp will find pronouncing certain sounds difficult. Lisps are caused by a person’s tongue moving incorrectly or the air they breathe flowing the wrong way when they try to speak.
Low Vision
Low vision is a visual disability that causes everyday struggles with eyesight. They can still see, but it takes away their ability to drive or read. Symptoms include blurred vision, inability to see in dimly lit spaces, only a central field of vision, only peripheral vision, or clouded vision.
M
Major Depressive Disorder
Major Depressive Disorder, also known as clinical depression, is a condition marked by persistent feelings of sadness and low mood over extended periods. Additional symptoms can include loss of interest in previously enjoyed activities, changes in sleep and appetite, and difficulty thinking clearly.
Moebius Syndrome
Moebius Syndrome is a condition in which weak or paralyzed facial nerves make it difficult for someone to eat, speak, and breathe. It can also cause limbs to appear different. Moebius Syndrome is a rare disability that is lifelong, but it won’t get worse after birth.
Multiple Sclerosis (MS)
Multiple sclerosis is when someone’s immune system starts attacking the covering of their nerves – also known as myelin – by mistake in any part of the body. This causes the brain to have significant trouble sending messages to the whole body. It may cause lifelong damage to the fibers in their nerves as well. Symptoms include numbness, weakness, difficulty walking, and vision problems.
Multiple/Compound Disabilities
Having a compound disability means that someone is experiencing more than one disability at the same time. An example would be someone with a physical disability, like a limb difference, who also has a visual disability like blindness.
Muscular Dystrophy
Muscular Dystrophy refers to a group of conditions inherited genetically that cause weakness in someone’s muscles. Over time, muscles weaken and shrink. There are multiple types of Muscular Dystrophy that affect different muscles.
O
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD)
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder is defined by an ongoing cycle of intrusive thoughts, pictures, or urges called obsessions that trigger severe anxiety, and repetitive behaviors aiming to ease the anxiety they cause and stop the thoughts called compulsions. OCD can affect people of any age.
Orofacial Myofunctional Disorder (OMD)
Orofacial myofunctional disorder is a condition that is characterized by issues moving and/or using the face, mouth, and/or tongue muscles. People with this condition struggle to speak clearly.
P
Paralysis
Paralysis occurs when the brain cannot send signals to the muscles, leading to muscle dysfunction. It may affect a specific area, one side, both sides, or even the entire body.
Polio
Polio is a disabling condition that can occur once someone is infected with poliovirus. This virus damages the nerves in someone’s spine or brain. Polio can cause paralysis, breathing problems, and even death.
Prader-Willi Syndrome
Prader-Willi Syndrome is a condition that affects a child’s growth and development. Signs and symptoms in babies include weak muscles, trouble feeding, delays in learning movement, and difficulty with thinking and learning, as well as behavioral issues. As they grow, they likely will eat too much, which could lead to obesity.
R
Rett Syndrome
Rett syndrome is a genetic brain disorder that affects brain development. Children with this condition often appear to develop normally for the first 6 months, but afterward they may lose motor skills, including crawling, walking, and hand use for communication.
S
Schizophrenia
Schizophrenia is a condition that causes changes in how someone thinks, feels, and acts. Symptoms include hallucinations, sensing things that aren’t there, and delusions, persistent, strong beliefs that are not based in reality and therefore not true. Schizophrenia can also cause disorganized thinking, unusual behavior, and trouble functioning, which negatively affect their daily lives.
Sensory Processing Disorder
Sensory Processing Disorder is a condition in which the brain processes sensory information differently. People with this condition have a hard time handling sights, sounds, smells, tastes, or touch in typical ways. This affects their perception of the world through their senses.
Spasmodic Dysphonia
Spasmodic Dysphonia is a rare disorder that makes it difficult to speak because there are uncontrollable spasms or tightness in someone’s vocal cords. These symptoms cause their voice to shake, sound out of breath, or sound like they have lost their voice. Treatments can help, but this disorder can’t be cured.
Spina Bifida
Spina bifida refers to physical and nerve-related disabilities caused by a gap in the spine that reveals the spinal cord and nerves. This gap is created when the spine is not fully closed before birth.
Stuttering
Stuttering refers to uncontrollable muscle movements that happen when someone is trying to speak, making speaking difficult. Symptoms include pauses in their speech, repetitive sounds, and getting stuck on words. Stuttering can occur anytime at any age but usually starts in childhood. People with this condition can recover.
T
Tinnitus
Tinnitus is a ringing or hissing sound coming from someone’s ear without external sounds. This disability can range from minor to major, with some cases being permanent.
Tourette’s Syndrome
Tourette’s Syndrome is a disability defined by sudden and uncontrollable movements and sounds called tics. Simple tics include blinking or clearing the throat, while complex tics include jumping and shouting.
Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI)
Traumatic brain injuries (TBIs) occur when the head experiences a significant impact or an object penetrates the skull and damages the brain. TBIs can range from mild, affecting how brain cells function, to severe, causing bruising, bleeding, torn brain tissue, or even death. They can cause long-term changes in brain function, leading to cognitive, physical, emotional, and behavioral challenges.
W
Williams Syndrome
Williams Syndrome arises when part of a chromosome is missing. As a result, genetic changes such as unique physical features, problems learning and developing as a child, and unique behaviors arise. This is a rare genetic condition.