Disability Categories Requiring Special Education Services

The IDEA lists the following different disability categories under which a child may be eligible for services. The disability must also affect the child's performance to the extent that special education services are required. The disability categories listed in IDEA are:

1. AUTISM means a developmental disability significantly affecting verbal and non-verbal 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, and 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 below.
2. DEAF-BLINDNESS means concomitant hearing and visual impairments, the combination of which causes such severe communications and other developmental and educational needs that they cannot be accommodated in special education programs solely for children with deafness or children with blindness.
3. DEAFNESS means a hearing impairment 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.
4. EMOTIONAL DISTURBANCE is a term that 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; or
- a tendency to develop physical symptoms or fears associated with personal or school problems. The term includes schizophrenia. The term does not apply to children who are socially maladjusted, unless it is determined that they have an emotional disturbance.
5. HEARING IMPAIRMENT 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.
6. MENTAL RETARDATION means significantly sub-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.
7. ORTHOPEDIC IMPAIRMENT means a severe orthopedic impairment that adversely affects a child's educational performance. The term includes impairments caused by congenital anomaly (e.g., clubfoot, absence of some member, etc.), 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).
8. OTHER HEALTH IMPAIRMENTS 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.
9. SPECIFIC LEARNING DISABILITY 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 an imperfect ability to listen, think, speak, read, write, spell, or to do mathematical calculations. The term includes such conditions as perceptual disabilities, brain injury, minimal brain dysfunction, dyslexia, and developmental aphasia. The term does not apply to children who have learning problems that are primarily the result of visual, hearing, or motor disabilities, of mental retardation, of emotional disturbance, or of environmental, cultural, or economic disadvantage.
10. SPEECH OR LANGUAGE IMPAIRMENT means a communication disorder, such as stuttering, impaired articulation, a language impairment, or a voice impairment, that adversely affects a child's educational performance.
11. 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. 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 function; information processing; and speech. the term does not apply to brain injuries that are congenital or degenerative, or to brain injuries induced by birth trauma.
12. VISUAL IMPAIRMENT means an impairment in vision that, even with correction, adversely affects a child's educational performance. The term includes both partial sight and blindness.