Children with Disabilities Definitions

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Home > OSL&P > Special Education > IDEA Eligibility Categories > Children with Disabilities Definitions

"Children with disabilities" or "students with disabilities" means children or students who require special education because of: autism; communication disorders; deafblindness; emotional disturbances; hearing impairments, including deafness; intellectual disability; orthopedic impairments; other health impairments; specific learning disabilities; traumatic brain injuries; or visual impairments, including blindness.
     (a) "Autism" means a developmental disability significantly affecting verbal and nonverbal communication and social interaction that adversely affects a child's educational performance. Other characteristics that may be 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. Essential features are typically but not necessarily manifested before age three. Autism may include autism spectrum disorders such as but not limited to autistic disorder, pervasive developmental disorder, not otherwise specified, and Asperger's syndrome. The term does not apply if a child's educational performance is adversely affected primarily because the child has an emotional disturbance. However, a child who qualifies for special education under the category of autism may also have an emotional disturbance as a secondary disability if the child meets the criteria under emotional disturbance.
     (b) "Communication Disorder" means the impairment of speech articulation, voice, fluency, or the impairment or deviant development of language comprehension and/or expression, or the impairment of the use of a spoken or other symbol system that adversely affects educational performance. The language impairment may be manifested by one or more of the following components of language: morphology, syntax, semantics, phonology, and pragmatics.
     (c) "Deafblindness" means having both hearing and visual impairments, the combination of which causes such severe communication and other developmental and educational problems that the child cannot be accommodated in special education programs designed solely for students having hearing or visual impairments
     (d) "Emotional Disturbance" 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:
       (A) An inability to learn that cannot be explained by intellectual, sensory, or health factors;
       (B) An inability to build or maintain satisfactory interpersonal relationships with peers and teachers;
       (C) Inappropriate types of behavior or feelings under normal circumstances;
       (D) A general pervasive mood of unhappiness or depression; or
       (E) A tendency to develop physical symptoms or fears associated with personal or school problems;
       (F) The term includes schizophrenia but does not apply to children who are socially maladjusted, unless it is determined that they have an emotional disturbance.
     (e) "Hearing Impairment" means a hearing condition, whether permanent or fluctuating, that adversely affects a child's educational performance. The term includes those children who are hard of hearing or deaf.
     (f) "Intellectual Disability" means significantly sub average general intellectual functioning, and includes a student whose intelligence test score is two or more standard deviations below the norm on a standardized individual intelligence test, existing concurrently with deficits in adaptive behavior and manifested during the developmental period, and that adversely affects a child's educational performance.
     (g) "Orthopedic Impairment" means a motor disability that adversely affects the child's educational performance. The term includes impairments caused by an anomaly, disease or other conditions (e.g., cerebral palsy, spinal bifida, muscular dystrophy or traumatic injury).
     (h) "Other Health Impairment" means limited strength, vitality, or alertness, including a heightened alertness to environmental stimuli that results in limited alertness with respect to the educational environment, that:
       (A) Is due to chronic or acute health problems (e.g. a heart condition, tuberculosis, rheumatic fever, nephritis, asthma, sickle cell anemia, hemophilia, epilepsy, lead poisoning, attention deficit disorder, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, leukemia, Tourette's syndrome or diabetes); and
       (B) Adversely affects a child's educational performance.
     (i) "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, which may manifest itself in an imperfect ability to listen, think, speak, read, write, spell or do mathematical calculations. Specific learning disability includes conditions such as perceptual disabilities, brain injury, dyslexia, minimal brain dysfunction, and developmental aphasia. The term does not include learning problems that are primarily the result of visual, hearing, or motor disabilities, intellectual disability, emotional disturbance, or environmental, cultural, or economic disadvantage.
     (j) "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 includes open or closed head injuries resulting in impairments in one or more areas, including cognition; language; memory; attention; reasoning; abstract thinking; judgment; problem-solving; sensory, perceptual, and motor abilities; psychosocial behavior; physical functions; information processing; and speech. The term does not include brain injuries that are congenital or degenerative, or brain injuries induced by birth trauma.
     (k) "Visual Impairment" means a visual impairment that, even with correction, adversely affects a child's educational performance. The term includes those children who are partially sighted or blind.

OAR 581-015-2000(4)
Also see 34 CFR 300.8, Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA)

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