(01) Intellectual Disability: Significantly subaverage general intellectual functioning, existing concurrently with deficits in adaptive behavior and manifested during the developmental period that adversely affects a child's educational performance.

(02) Hearing Impairment: 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.
 
(03) Deaf: 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.
 
(04) Speech or Language Impairment: A communication disorder such as stuttering, impaired articulation, language impairment or voice impairment that adversely affects a child's educational performance.
 
(05) Visual Impairment: An impairment in vision which, even with correction, adversely affects a child's educational performance. The term includes both partial sight and blindness.
 
(06) Emotional Disability: 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:

 

It can include:

• 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; or

• A tendency to develop physical symptoms or fears associated with personal or school problems.

 

The term includes schizophrenia. The term does not include a student who is socially maladjusted, unless it is determined that they have an emotional disturbance.

 

(07) Orthopedic Impairment: A severe orthopedic impairment that adversely affects a child's educational performance. 

 

Includes impairments:

• Caused by congenital anomaly (e.g., club foot, absence of some member, etc.)

• Caused by disease (e.g., poliomyelitis, bone tuberculosis, etc.)

• From other causes (e.g., cerebral palsy, amputations, and fractures or burns that cause contractures.)

 

(08) Other Health Impairment: 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 adversely affecting a student’s educational performance, due to chronic or acute health problems, such as:

 

This can include:

• Heart condition

• Rheumatic fever

• Nephritis

• Asthma

• Attention deficit disorder

• Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder

• Sickle cell anemia

• Hemophilia

• Epilepsy

• Lead poisoning

• Leukemia

• Diabetes

 

(09) Specific Learning Disability (SLD): 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 do mathematical calculations.

 

SLD includes conditions such as:

• perceptual disabilities

• brain injury

• minimal brain dysfunction

• dyslexia

• developmental aphasia

 

SLD does not include students who have learning problems that are primarily the result of visual, hearing, or motor impairments, intellectual disability, emotional disturbance, environmental, cultural, or economic disadvantage.

 

(10) Multiple Disabilities: Concomitant 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. The term does not include students with deaf-blindness.

 

(12) Deaf-Blindness: Concomitant hearing and visual impairments, the combination of which causes such severe communication and other developmental and educational needs that the student cannot be accommodated solely as a student with deafness or a student with blindness.

 

(13) Traumatic Brain Injury: 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. 

 

The term applies to open or closed head injuries resulting in impairments in one or more areas, such as:

• Cognition

• Language

• Memory

• Attention

• Reasoning

• Abstract thinking

• Judgment

• Problem solving

• Sensory, perceptual and motor abilities

• Psychosocial behavior

• Physical functions

• Information processing

• Speech

 

The term does not apply to brain injuries that are congenital or degenerative, or to brain injuries induced by birth trauma.

 

(14) Autism: A developmental disability significantly affecting verbal and nonverbal communication and social interaction, generally evident before age three, that 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,

• unusual responses to sensory experiences

 

The term does not apply if a child's educational performance is adversely affected primarily because the child has an emotional disturbance (as defined under Emotional Disturbance).

 

(15) Developmental Delay: A disability affecting a child ages 3 through 7 who is experiencing a delay of at least 25% in one or more of the following developmental areas:

• Cognitive

• Communication

• Physical

• Adaptive

• Social

• Emotional