top of page

Disabilities

Disability covers wide variety of impairment, including chronic disease, physical impairments and psycho-social disability. These include:

 

  • Total or partial loss of a person’s bodily or mental functions

  • Total or partial loss of a part of the body

  • The presence in the body of organisms causing disease or illness

  • The presence in the body of organisms capable of causing disease or illness

  • The malfunction, malformation or disfigurement of a part of a person’s body

  • A disorder or malfunction that results in a person learning differently from a person without the disorder or malfunction

  • A disorder, illness or disease that effects a person’s thought processes, perception of reality, emotions or judgement, or that results in disturbed behaviour

Types of Disability...

Acquired Brain Injury
Autism
Blind & Vision Impairment
Deaf & Hard on Hearing
Intellectual Disability
Psychosocial Disability
Neurological Disability
Physical Disability

Acquired Brain Injury

An Acquired Brain Injury (ABI) is a term used to describe all types of brain injury which occur after birth. The brain can be injured as a result of a traumatic brain injury, stroke, tumour, substance abuse, a lack of oxygen, disease or infection

Autism

Autism Spectrum Condition (ASC) is a lifelong neuro-developmental disability that affects a person’s ability to interact with the world around them. There is no known cause of ASC and no two people with ASC are exactly the same, and all have unique interests and strengths.

Intellectual Disability

Intellectual disability is a broad term used to define a group of conditions, which are characterised by an IQ below 70 and limitations in both intellectual functioning and adaptive behaviour. Intellectual disability is generally identified during childhood and often results in difficulties with communication, socialisation and daily living skills.  Inttellectual disabilities can be diagnosed as moderate, severe or profound in accordance with current DSM criteria.

Blind & Visual Impairment

A person with vision impairment is someone who has limitations with what he can see and affect their ability to perform vocational, recreational and/or social tasks. Blindness and vision loss can occur from birth or at any other time in a person’s life and result from a range of different causes.

  • Total blindness: those that have no measurable or useable vision, and no light perception.

  • Low vision : those whose vision loss cannot be corrected with visual aids, such as glasses or contact lenses.

​

​Permanent blindness in both eyes is diagnosed and assessed when an ophthalmologist diangoses with the following:

  • Corrected visual acuity (extent to which an object can be brought into focus) on the Snellen Scale must be less than or equal to 6/60 in both eyes; or

  • Constriction to within 10 degrees or less of arc of central fixation in the better eye, irrespective of corrected visual acuity (i.e. visual fields are reduced to a measured arc of 10 degrees or less); or

  • A combination of visual defects resulting in the same degree of visual impairment as that occurring in the above points

Deaf & Hard of Hearing

People who are deaf or is hard of hearing have functional hearing loss that range from mild to profound and can be caused by a multitude of factors including illness, injury, hereditary or age. Disorders resulting in hearing loss

​

People who identify as Deaf (with a capitalised D) often have little or no functional hearing and use sign language to communicate. The term hearing impairment is often used to describe people who have mild to moderate hearing loss. People with a permanent bilateral hearing loss experience > 90 decibels in the better ear (pure tone average of 500Hz, 1000Hz, 2000Hz and 4000Hz).

Psychosocial Disability

Psychosocial disability are people with disability resulting from a mental illness. This is any person who's disability affects their emotions, thinking or behaviour and ability to function in life. Not everyone who has a mental health condition will have a psychosocial disability, but for people who do, it can be severe, longstanding and impact on their recovery. 

Neurological Disabilities

eurological conditions affect the central and peripheral nervous system and can be acute, chronic, remissive or degenerative in nature. There are over 600 different neurological conditions including:

  • Epilepsy

  • Motor neurone disease

  • Multiple sclerosis and more.

  • Alzheimer’s dementia

  • Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease

  • HIV dementia

  • Huntington’s disease

  • Multi-infarct dementia

  • Parkinson’s disease

  • Post-polio syndrome

  • Vascular dementia.

  • Hydrocephalus

  • Multiple system atrophy.

​

1. Systemic atrophies primarily affecting the central nervous system

  • Abetalipoproteinaemia

  • Adult-onset spinal muscular atrophy/late-onset SMA type III)

  • Fazio-Londe disease/Progressive bulbar palsy of childhood

  • Friedrich’s ataxia

  • Hereditary spastic paraplegia/ Infantile-onset ascending hereditary spastic paralysis/ L1 syndrome/ spastic paraplegias types 2 and 11Huntington’s disease/Huntington’s chorea

  • Louis-Bar syndrome/Ataxia-telangiectasia

  • Motor neuron disease/Motor neurone disease/ Lou Gehrig’s disease /Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis

  • Primary lateral sclerosis

  • Progressive bulbar palsy

  • Spinal muscular atrophy – all types

  • Spinocerebellar Ataxia – all types, including Machado-Joseph disease.

​

2. Extrapyramidal and Movement Disorders

  • Hallervorden-Spatz syndrome /Pantothenate kinase-associated neurodegeneration (PKAN)/neurodegeneration with brain iron accumulation 1 (NBIA 1)

  • Parkinson’s disease

  • Shy-Drager syndrome /Multiple System Atrophy /Striatonigral degeneration (MSA-P)/ Sporadic olivopontocerebellar atrophy (MSA-C)

  • Steele-Richardson-Olszewski syndrome/Progressive supranuclear ophthalmoplegia

  • Stiff-man syndrome /Stiff-person syndrome.​

​

3. Degenerative diseases of the nervous system

  • Alzheimer’s disease

  • Alpers disease/Grey-matter degeneration/Alpers syndrome/progressive sclerosing poliodystrophy/progressive infantile poliodystrophy

  • Lewy body dementia

  • Pick’s disease.

​

4. Demyelinating diseases of the central nervous system

  • Adrenoleukodystrophy

  • Multiple sclerosis

  • Schilder’s disease /Diffuse myelinoclastic sclerosis – non-remitting.

​

5. Episodic & Paroxysmal Disorders

  • Brain stem stroke syndrome

  • Cerebellar stroke syndrome

  • Motor and sensory lacunar syndromes

  • Lennox syndrome /Lennox-Gastaut syndrome

  • West’s syndrome.

​

6. Polyneuropathies and other disorders of the peripheral nervous system

  • Adult Refsum disease

  • Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease/Hereditary motor and sensory neuropathy/ peroneal muscular atrophy

  • Dejerine-Sottas disease /Dejerine-Sottas syndrome/Dejerine-Sottas neuropathy/progressive hypertrophic interstitial polyneuropathy of childhood/onion bulb neuropathy

  • Infantile Refsum disease.

​

Physical Disorders

A physical disability is any condition, temporary or permanent, which results in impaired mobility, physical capacity, stamina or dexterity. Physical disability can be caused by a variety of factors such as injury, disease, illness or genetic conditions.

​

1. Conditions Resulting in Physical Impairment

  • Amputations

  • Congenital absence of limb or part thereof

  • Epidermolysis bullosa

  • Harlequin type icthyosis

  • Juvenile arthritis / Stills Disease (excluding monocyclic/self-limited Adult Onset Stills disease)

  • Rheumatoid arthritis.

​

2. Diseases of myoneural junction and muscle

  • Andersen-Tawil syndrome/ Periodic paralysis /myoplegia paroxysmalis familiaris

  • Becker muscular dystrophy

  • Congenital muscular dystrophy

  • Distal muscular dystrophy

  • Duchenne muscular dystrophy

  • Facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy

  • Limb-girdle muscular dystrophy

  • Mitochondrial myopathy

  • Myotonic dystrophy /dystrophia myotonica

  • Myotonic muscular dystrophy

  • Myotubular myopathy

  • Oculopharyngeal muscular dystrophy

  • Paramyotonia Congenita

  • Thomsens disease /Congenital myotonia/ Becker myotonia).

​

3. Cerebral palsy and other paralytic syndromes:

  • Cerebral palsy

  • Diplegia

  • Hemiplegia

  • Monoplegia

  • Paraplegia

  • Quadriplegia

  • Tetraplegia.

​

​

Genetic Disabilities

Genetic disabilities are conditions that consistently result in permanent and severe intellectual and physical impairments:

  • Angelman syndrome

  • Coffin-Lowry syndrome in males

  • Cornelia de Lange syndrome

  • Cri du Chat syndrome

  • Edwards syndrome (Trisomy 18)

  • Lesch-Nyhan syndrome

  • Leigh syndrome

  • Leukodystrophies

  • Lysosomal storage disorders

  • Mucopolysaccharidoses

  • Patau syndrome

  • Rett syndrome

  • Spinal Muscular Atrophies

​

1. Epidermolysis Bullosa

  • YR

  • Autosomal recessive dystrophic epidermolysis bullos

  • Hallopeau-Siemens type

  • Herlitz Junctional Epidermolysis Dystrophica

 

2. Leukodystrophies

  • Alexander disease (infantile and neonatal forms)

  • Canavan disease

  • Krabbe disease (globoid cell leukodystrophy) – Infantile form

  • Pelizaeus-Merzbacher Disease (Connatal form)

​

3. Lysosomal storage disorders

  • Laucher disease Types 2 and 3

  • Niemann-Pick disease (Types A and C)

  • Pompe disease

  • Sandhoff disease (infantile form)

  • Schindler disease (Type 1)

  • Tay-Sachs disease (infantile form)

​

4. Mucopolysaccharidoses 

  • MPS 1-H (Hurler syndrome)

  • MPS III (San Fillipo syndrome)

  • Osteogenesis Imperfecta (severe forms):

  • Type II - with two or more fractures per year and significant deformities severely limiting ability to perform activities of daily living

​

5. Spinal Muscular Atrophie

  • Werdnig-Hoffmann disease (SMA Type 1- Infantile form)

  • Dubowitz disease (SMA Type II – Intermediate form)

  • X-linked spinal muscular atrophy

​

6. Chromosomal abnormalities resulting in permanent impairment:

  • Aicardi-Goutières syndrome

  • CHARGE syndrome

  • Cockayne syndrome Types I and Type II/Cerebro-oculo-faciao-skeletal (COFS) syndrome /Pena Shokeir syndrome Type II/Weber-Cockayne syndrome/Neill-Dingwall syndrome)

  • Cohen syndrome

  • Dandy-Walker syndrome

  • DiGeorge syndrome /22q11.2 deletion syndrome/Velocardiofacial syndrome/ Shprintzen syndrome/Conotruncal anomaly face syndrome

  • Down syndrome

  • Fragile X syndrome

  • Kabuki syndrome

  • Menkes disease

  • Prader-Willi syndrome

  • Seckel syndrome /microcephalic primordial dwarfism/Harper’s syndrome/Virchow-Seckel dwarfism

  • Smith-Lemli-Optiz syndrome

  • Smith-Magenis syndrome

  • Spinal muscular atrophy Types III and IV

  • Sturge-Weber syndrome

  • Trisomy 9

  • Tuberous sclerosis

  • Turner syndrome

  • Williams syndrome

  • Wolf-Hirschhorn syndrome.

​

7. Congenital Conditions: cases where malformations cannot be corrected by surgery or other treatment and result in permanent impairment but with variable severity:

  • Arnold-Chiari Types 2 and 3/Chiari malformation

  • Microcephaly

  • Fetal alcohol syndrome

  • Fetal hydantoin syndrome

  • Spina bifida

  • VATER syndrome /VACTERL association.

​

Conditions Resulting in Multiple Types of Impairment

Conditions resulting in multiple types of impairment

  • Aceruloplasminemia

  • Addison-Schilder disease /Adrenoleukodystrophy

  • Albinism

  • Arginosuccinic aciduria

  • Aspartylglucosaminuria

  • Cerebrotendinous xanthomatosis /cerebral cholesterosis

  • Congenital cytomegalovirus infection

  • Congenital iodine-deficiency syndrome /cretinism

  • Congenital rubella syndrome

  • Glycine encephalopathy /non-ketotic hyperglycinaemia

  • GM1 gangliosidosis

  • Hartnup disease

  • Homocystinuria

  • Lowe syndrome/ Oculocerebrorenal syndrome

  • Mannosidosis

  • Menkes disease

  • Mucolipidosis II /I-cell disease

  • Mucolipidosis III /pseudo-Hurler polydystrophy

  • Mucolipidosis IV

  • Neuronal ceroid lipofuscinosis (NCL)/ Adult type (Kuf’s or Parry’s disease)/ Juvenile (Batten disease)/ Late infantile (Jansky-Bielschowsky)

  • Niemann-Pick disease

  • Pyruvate carboxylase deficiency

  • Pyruvate dehydrogenase deficiency

  • Sialidosis

  • Sulfite oxidase deficiency.

bottom of page