There can be many different types of impairments which, in combination with activity limitations and participation restrictions, cause a person to be disabled in society. This means that persons with disabilities are not a homogenous group, and one person with a disability can have a completely different experience from the next. Also, people can experience single or multiple impairments, different levels of severity etc
Some examples of types of impairments are (classification may differ depending on location or who is doing the classifying):.
a) Physical
A set of conditions that results in difficulties in movement, holding/grasping, feeling, movement coordination, height and ability to perform physical activities. May include:
- Conditions that affect the limbs, skeleton, joints or muscles, or a combination of these
- Loss of limbs
- Conditions of the central and peripheral nervous system e.g., spinal injury, stroke, leprosy
b) Hearing
This refers to various degrees of loss of hearing. The degrees of hearing impairment are:
- Mild: difficulty to hear soft sound, such as whispering. Can benefit from hearing aids.
- Moderate: difficulty to clearly hear during conversations. Can benefit from hearing aids
- Severe: can only hear loud sound or noise.
- Profound: difficulty to perceive any sound at all. This is also referred to as deafness. Cannot benefit from hearing aids.
Depending on the severity of hearing impairment, it may also affect speech, particularly if it begins before a child acquires language.
c) Vision
Is the partial or total loss of vision or ability to see and read. Vision impairments can be catego-rised as follows:
- Partially sighted: some difficulty to see or read
- Low vision: severe vision impairment, which makes it difficult to read at normal distances. People with low vision require supportive tools to see and read
- Legally blind: difficulty to clearly see near or far
- Totally blind: inability to see at all. Such people need non-visual resources, such as Braille or audio
d) Speach
This group of impairments affects the ability to communicate. Communication is a two-way process that involves clear expression and full understanding of what is said. Speech impairment can affect either one or both ways, and includes:
- Production of speech: difficulty in verbal expression, such as articulation of speech and / or sounds; difficulties with the quality of the voice; difficulty with sounds formation (stammer-ing) or a combination of these.
- Difficulty in understanding written or spoken language or in using the right words. However, most persons with speech impairment do not have difficulties in understanding written or spoken language.
Intellectual impairment may also affect speech due to difficulty in understanding.
e) Psychosocial impairments
Psychosocial disability refers to persons affected by a “medical or psychiatric condition that affects an individual’s cognition, emotion and/or behavioural control, and interferes with his or her ability to learn and function in the family, at work or in society4”. There is a broad range of acute or chronic psychosocial impairments. They include medical conditions, such as anxiety, depression, schizophrenia and post-traumatic stress disorder. The duration may vary from one episode in life to recurrent experiences. Most persons with psychosocial impairments benefit from relevant medications prescribed by trained health workers. Most persons with psychoso-cial impairments lead an active life with proper and adequate supports.
Although often confused, psychosocial impairment is different from intellectual impairment.
f) Intellectual impairments
Intellectual impairments refer to life-long limitations of the cognitive and intellectual abilities of a person that often results in the person requiring supervision in connection with daily activities. It usually affects the ability to comprehend and learn; ability to solve problems; ability to remember; ability to learn new information and skills, including social skills.
Intellectual disability often has its onset in childhood, and is often linked to brain development problems prior to or at birth. Environmental factors, particularly things and people that surrounds a person with intellectual impairment, can impact his/her development, particularly during childhood.
Intellectual impairments may affect people in terms of education, work and daily routines. There are different degrees of intellectual impairments: mild, moderate, severe and profound.
g) Learning impairments
A learning impairment is a general term for disorders that involve difficulty in learning to read or interpret words, letters and other symbols, but that do not affect general intelligence. An exam-ple is dyslexia (difficulty in reading) or dyscalculia (difficulty grasping mathematical concepts).
Persons can also have more than one impairment.
