Introduction:
A disability is an umbrella term, covering impairments, activity limitations, and participation restrictions. 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; while a participation restriction is a problem experienced by an individual in involvement in life situations. Disability is thus a complex phenomenon, reflecting the interaction between features of a person’s body and features of the society in which he or she lives.
Causes:
Causes of disability are divided into two parts:
- In terms of the time of occurrence: It depends on the time of the occurrence of disability: (Prenatal, during birth and postpartum).
- In terms of the nature of incidence factors: It depends on the causes of disability and is divided into two parts: (Genetic causes and acquired causes).
Types of disability:
1- Motor disability:
The motor disability is divided into five types:
First: Cases of cerebral palsy:
It is a neurologic impairment in the brain, resulting in a paralysis that affects all four limbs either or just the lower limbs, or affects only one side of the body, either the right side or the left side, and this paralysis resulting in a loss of the ability to control.
Second: Muscle dystrophy disease:
A hereditary disease that begins with voluntary muscle injury in the four limbs of the patient, and then turn to afflict the rest of involuntary muscles.
Third: Cases of fission or occurrence of an incision in the spine:
The vital cells in the spinal cord are seriously injured when parts of them come out and their main functions are failed in whole or in part.
Fourth: Various birth defects:
They are various birth defects caused by hereditary or non-hereditary reasons during abnormal pregnancy, affecting joints and bones. These defects show up either in the form of limb anomalies or strange wraps in the bones.
Fifth: Cases of different diagnosis:
They are different cases as follows: (polio, osteoporosis, endocrine disorder, bone marrow diseases, chronic peripheral nerves diseases, and other chronic diseases of the blood vessels).
2- Mental disability:
Mental disability is defined as a state of mental growth that is halted or not completed and particularly characterized by a defect in skills which is apparent during the growth cycle and affects the general level of intelligence or cognitive abilities.
3- Vision disability:
Visual disability ranges between total and partial blindness, and therefore there are two types of vision disability:
Blind persons, whose visual condition require them to use Braille system.
Persons with poor vision who can see through visual aids.
4- Hearing disability:
Hearing disability is an umbrella term covering a wide range of degrees of hearing loss ranging between deafness, severe loss and moderate loss. It may be of apparent or hidden signs, leading to some problems in the child life without knowing the causes, such as: school failure, and for showing no interaction with others and the child may be called stupid, and is usually associated with several disabilities, such as: (Down syndrome, cerebral palsy, intellectual disability, autism, hyperactivity disorder, lack of activity and the palatine fissure, and cleft lip).