User:Teachingwithouttalking/sandbox/Special Education Resources

Part I: Federal Categories of Special Education

The 14 Categories of Special Education

Federal Disability Term	Alternative Term	Brief Description	Characteristics
Specific Learning Disability	Learning Disability (LD)	A disorder related to processing information that leads to difficulties in reading, writing, and computing; the most common disability, accounting for half of all students receiving special education	Can be dyslexia, dysgraphia, or dyscalcula. May have trouble spelling, may have trouble learning the alphabet, may misread math symbols and/or numbers
Other Health Impairment		Conditions that limit a child’s strength, energy, or alertness.	Can be due to asthma, ADHD, diabetes, epilepsy, a heart condition, lead poisoning, leukemia, sickle cell anemia, Tourette syndrome, and more.
Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD)		Developmental disability significantly affecting verbal and nonverbal communication and social interaction.	Characteristics can include engaging in repetitive activities, resistance to environmental change, and unusual responses to sensory experiences
Emotional Disturbance		An emotional condition that markedly adversely affects a child’s educational performance.	Characteristics can include an inability to build or maintain relationships with peers, a general mood of unhappiness, and/or a tendency to develop physical symptoms of fears associated with personal or school problems.
Speech or language impairment		Communication disorder or impaired articulation.	Can include fluency disorders, voice disorders, and/or language disorders
Visual impairment including blindness		An impairment in vision that even with correction adversely affects education.	Signs of visual impairment may include eyes that don't move together, crossed eyes, eyes that bulge or dance, pupils of unequal size, repeated covering of one eye, holding things to close to the face, etc.
Deafness		A hearing impairment so severe that a child is impaired in processing linguistic information through hearing, with or without amplification.	May not respond consistently to their name, may ask for things to be repeated often, has unclear speech, turns volume up too loud on devices.
Hearing impairment	Hard of Hearing	A hearing impairment less severe than deafness	May not respond consistently to their name, may ask for things to be repeated often, has unclear speech, turns volume up too loud on devices.
Deaf-blindness		Simultaneous hearing and visual impairment	Characteristics can include those from the hearing impairment and the visual impairment, that may appear at the same time.
Orthopedic impairment		Severe orthopedic impairments that adversely affect education.	Can be caused by bone tuberculosis, cerebral palsy, amputations, fractures, burns, or other diseases or physical impairments.
Intellectual disability	Mental retardation	Significantly subaverage general intellectual functioning, existing concurrently with deficits in adaptive behavior.	Characteristics can include trouble speaking, remembering things, understanding social rules, solving problems, and/or thinking logically.
Traumatic brain injury		Injury to the brain that results in functional or psychosocial impairment.	Can result in impairments in cognition, language, memory, attention, reasoning, abstract thinking, judgement, and more.
Multiple disabilities		Simultaneous impairments that cannot be accommodated under a program for one impairment.	May need help walking, standing, speaking, breathing, learning, reading, and/or caring for oneself.
Developmental Delay		A delay in one or more of the following: physical, cognitive, communicative, social, emotional, or behavioral development.	Characteristics can include delays in speech, motor skills, emotional control, and/or self-care skills.

References

Categories of disability under part B of idea. Center for Parent Information and Resources. (2019). Retrieved December 21, 2021, from https://www.parentcenterhub.org/categories/#ohi