Multiple Disabilities,Physical and Other Health Impairments

• Multiple Disabilities - Multiple Disabilities is defined as students who receive special education services under that classification have more than one disability. IDEA defines multiple disabilities by the presence of "concomitant impairments" (such as an intellectual disability and blindness; emotional or behavioral disorder and orthopedic impairment). This combination of which causes such intense educational needs that they cannot be accommodated by solely addressing one of the impairments. About 2 percent of students receiving special education services are classified as having multiple disabilities.

• Physical Disability - A physical disability is defined as a long-term condition that impairs a person's physical functioning, mobility, stamina or dexterity. Physical disabilities can be hereditary, congenital, or be acquired at some point in life. Impairment in a person's body structure or function, or mental functioning; examples of impairments include loss of a limb, loss of vision or memory loss. Activity limitation, such as difficulty seeing, hearing, walking, or problem solving.

• Other Health Impairments include those "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: 1. 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 2. affects a child's educational performance.

Students with multiple disabilities may have specific causes of each disability to be unknown. However, at other times the cause is easy to pinpoint. In the majority of children with severe or profound intellectual impairments, a biomedical factor often causes the impairments. For example, specific genetic or chromosomal differences can lead to intellectual disability. The most common are Down Syndrome, deletion syndrome and fragile X syndrome. Other biomedical factors can contribute to the presence of multiple disabilities. This includes malnutrition and vitamin deficiencies during development, as well as toxic threats. Also vision and hearing impairments is 40 times more common in people with intellectual disability.

• Physical Disabilities

• Other Health Impairments

• Orthopedic Impairments

• Multiple Disabilities

• Person-centered Planning

• Assistive Technology

• Research-Based Transition Practices to Promote Independent Living