• Areas of Disability

    Autism:

    Autism means a developmental disability significantly affecting verbal and nonverbal communication and social interaction, generally evident before age three, which adversely affects a child’s educational performance. 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.


    Deaf-Blindness:

    Deaf-Blindness means related 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 children with deafness or children or children with blindness.

     

    Deaf or Hard of Hearing:

    Deaf or Hard of Hearing (DHH) means an impairment in hearing, whether permanent or fluctuating, that adversely affects a child’s educational performance but that is not included under the definition of deafness in this section. Deaf (hearing) means a hearing impairment that is so severe that the child is impaired in processing linguistic information through hearing, with or without amplification that adversely affects a child’s educational performance.


    Emotional Disability:

    Emotional Disability means 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 child’s educational performance.

    An inability to learn that cannot be explained by intellectual, sensory, or health factors.
    An inability to build or maintain satisfactory interpersonal relationships with peers and teachers.
    Inappropriate types of behavior or feelings under normal circumstances.
    A general pervasive mood of unhappiness or depression.
    A tendency to develop physical symptoms or fears associated with personal or school problems.


    Intellectual Disability:

    Intellectual Disability means significantly below average general intellectual functioning, existing concurrently with deficits in adaptive behavior and manifested during the developmental period, that adversely affects a child’s educational performance.
     

    Multiple Disabilities:

    Multiple Disabilities means related impairments (such as mental retardation-blindness, mental retardation-orthopedic impairment, etc.), the combination of which causes such severe educational needs that they cannot be accommodated in special education programs solely for one of the impairments. Multiple disabilities do not include deaf-blindness.


    Orthopedic Impairment:

    Orthopedic Impairment means a severe orthopedic impairment that adversely affects a child’s educational performance. The term includes impairments caused by a congenital anomaly, impairments caused by disease (e.g.; poliomyelitis, bone tuberculosis, etc.), and impairments from other causes (e.g.; cerebral palsy, amputations, and fractures or burns that cause contractures).
     


    Other Health Impairment:

    Other Health Impairment means 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 such as asthma, attention deficit disorder or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, diabetes, epilepsy, a heart condition, hemophilia lead poisoning, leukemia, nephritis, rheumatic fever, and sickle cell anemia, and
    Adversely affects a child’s educational performance.
     

    Specific Learning Disability:

    Specific Learning Disabilities means a disorder in one or more of the basic psychological processes involved in understanding or in using language, spoken or written, that may manifest itself in the imperfect ability to listen, think, speak, read, write, spell, or to do mathematical calculations.

     

    Speech or Language Impairment:

    Speech or Language Impairment means a communication disorder, such as stuttering, impaired articulation, language impairment, or a voice impairment, that adversely affects a child’s educational performance.


     
    Traumatic Brain Injury:

    Traumatic Brain Injury means an acquired injury to the brain caused by an external physical force, resulting in total or partial functional disability or psychosocial impairment, or both, that adversely affects a child’s educational performance. Traumatic brain injury applies to open or closed head injuries resulting in impairments in one or more areas, such as cognition; language; memory; attention; abstract thinking judgment; problem-solving; sensory, perceptual, and motor abilities; psychosocial behavior; physical functions; information processing; and speech. Traumatic brain injury does not apply to brain injuries that are congenital or degenerative, or to brain injuries induced by birth trauma.


    Visual Impairment (including blindness):

    Visual Impairment including blindness means an impairment in vision that, wven with correction, adversely affects a child's educational performance.  The term includes both partial sight and blindness.