A disability in humans may be physical, cognitive/mental, sensory, emotional, and developmental or some combination of these.
An impairment is a problem in body function or structure; an activity limitation is a difficulty
encountered by an individual in
executing a task or action.
An
individual may also qualify as disabled
if he/she has had impairment in the past or is seen as disabled based on a
personal or group standard or norm. Such impairments may include physical,
sensory, and cognitive or developmental disabilities. Mental disorders (also
known as psychiatric or psychosocial disability) and various types of chronic
disease may also qualify as disabilities.
Some
advocates object to describing certain conditions (notably deafness and autism)
as “disabilities”, arguing that it is more appropriate to consider them developmental differences that have
been unfairly stigmatized by society.
A disability
may occur during a person’s lifetime or may be present from birth.
Types of disability
Disability
is caused by impairments to various
subsystems of the body.
These
can be broadly sorted into the following categories:
·
Any
impairment which limits the physical function of limbs or fine or gross motor
ability is a physical disability.
Other physical disabilities include impairments which limit other facets of
daily living, such as severe sleep apnoea.
·
Sensory disabilities relate mainly to sight and hearing.
The inability to smell or taste is relatively rarer and is not always
considered to be a disability. Other sensory impairments such as of the skin senses, the sensing of touch, heat, cold or pain also exist and are commonly associated with physical disabilities
involving paralysis.
·
Visual impairment (or vision impairment) is vision
loss (of a person) to such a degree as to qualify as an additional support need
through a significant limitation of visual capability resulting from either
disease, trauma, or congenital or degenerative conditions that cannot be
corrected by conventional means, such as refractive correction, medication, or
surgery. This functional loss of vision is typically defined to manifest with
·
Hearing impairment or hard of hearing or deafness
refers to conditions in which individuals are fully or partially unable to
detect or perceive at least some frequencies of sound which can typically be
heard by most people.
·
Impairment
of the sense of smell and taste are commonly associated with aging but can also
occur in younger people due to a wide variety of causes. It is called olfactory impairment. There are a wide
variety of olfactory disorders:
·
Gustatory impairment: complete loss of the sense of taste is known as ageusia, while dysgeusia
is persistent abnormal sense of taste.
·
Somatosensory impairment: Insensitivity to stimuli such as touch, heat, cold, and pain are often an adjunct to a more general physical impairment
involving neural pathways and is very commonly associated with paralysis (in which the motor neural
circuits are also affected).
·
A
balance disorder is a disturbance that causes an individual
to feel unsteady, for example when
standing or walking. It may be accompanied by symptoms of being giddy, woozy,
or have a sensation of movement, spinning, or floating. Balance is the result
of several body systems working together.
·
Intellectual disability is a broad concept that ranges from
mental retardation to cognitive deficits too mild or too
specific (as in specific learning
disability) to qualify as mental retardation. Intellectual disabilities may
appear at any age.
·
A
mental disorder or mental illness is
a psychological or behavioural pattern generally associated with subjective
distress or disability that occurs in an individual, and which are not a part
of normal development or culture.
·
Developmental disability is any disability that results in problems with growth and development.
Although the term is often used as a synonym or euphemism for intellectual disability, the term also
encompasses many congenital medical conditions that have no mental or
intellectual components.
Disability benefit, or disability
pension, is a major kind of disability
insurance, and is provided by government agencies to people who are
temporarily or permanently unable to work due to a disability.
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