What Is Disability?
Each person possesses different abilities—physical, sensory, intellectual, or psychosocial—that allow us to lead distinct and unique lives. However, in some cases, some of these abilities may not have developed or may have been lost, and in these cases, we refer to this as disability.
Thus, disability would be a condition in which a person may experience difficulties carrying out everyday and ordinary tasks that, for other individuals of the same age without that disability, are not complicated.
In addition to the loss or limitation of ability, the physical, social and cultural context in which the person lives makes the experience of disability unique for each individual, which is why attempts to classify it are difficult.
The most common classification divides it into three main areas: motor, when the affected organ is the locomotor system, psychic, when the impairment affects intellectual functioning, and sensory when the limitations affect one of the five senses.
While some disabilities are linked to well-defined symptoms or manifestations, there are also those generically called invisible, meaning they are not readily apparent. Such a condition often occurs with some intellectual disabilities. For example, when television programs discuss people with intellectual disabilities, it is common to see images of people with other disabilities or only with Down syndrome, since in many cases intellectual disability is not physically visible. Such practices only serve to obscure the visibility of this group and, in many cases, leaves society unaware of the reality of certain disabilities.
Types of Disabilities and Their Characteristics
| Type of disability | Main area affected | General characteristic |
| Motor disability | Locomotor system | Affects functional mobility of one or more parts of the body |
| Sensory disability | One or more senses | Reduces the amount of information gathered from the surroundings |
| Intellectual disability | Cognitive and adaptive skills | Involves limitations in skills used for daily life and interaction |
| Psychosocial disability | Mental health and social functioning | Can affect participation and social functioning |
| Visceral disability | Internal body systems | Involves functional and structural impairments affecting participation |
| Multiple disabilities | Multiple areas | Involves various disabilities in different degrees and combinations |
Motor Disability
People with physical or motor disabilities have an alteration in their locomotor system due to a malfunction of the nervous, muscular, and skeletal-articular systems. This alteration hinders or prevents functional mobility of one or more parts of the body.
It can be temporary, for example, due to immobilisation from trauma, or permanent, such as that caused by infectious processes like poliomyelitis, neurological malformations, or accidents.
Sensory Disability
People with sensory disabilities, due to impairment of one or more senses, experience a significant reduction in the amount of information they gather from their surroundings. Depending on the affected sense, they are classified as follows:
Visual Impairment
Visual impairment. This refers to the loss or reduction of vision, encompassing all its causes and degrees of severity.
Hearing Impairment
Hearing impairment. This is defined as the loss or functional abnormality of the auditory system and results in difficulty hearing, which also implies difficulties in accessing language and speech. Therefore, any disorder in auditory perception at an early age affects linguistic and communicative development, as well as cognitive processes.
Intellectual Disability
It involves significant limitations in the skills a person learns to function in daily life, understand the environment and interact with it.
People with intellectual disabilities have difficulties with cognitive skills, that is, all those related to information processing: attention, perception, memory, problem-solving, comprehension, establishing analogies, etc.
Other Types of Disability
In addition to these three major types of disability, other less well-known classifications differentiate between:
Psychosocial Disability
‘Mental disability’ is defined as the presence of predictably permanent and severe alterations in adaptive or social behaviour. These alterations generally stem from mental disorders such as depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and personality disorders. One of the major obstacles to the social integration of this group is the social stigma surrounding mental illness, stemming from both difficulties in recognition and acceptance and unfounded fears associated with it.
Visceral Disability
This condition is one of the least known disabilities, yet one of the most common. It encompasses limitations in life and community participation experienced by individuals with functional and structural impairments in any of the cardiovascular, haematological, immunological, respiratory, digestive, metabolic, endocrine, and genitourinary systems.
Multiple Disability
Multiple disabilities are characterised by the presence of various disabilities at different degrees and in different combinations. Discussing multiple disabilities involves not only adding up the types of disabilities a person may have but also the interaction between them, which in most cases creates entirely new and individual aspects of different types of disabilities. The severity of these disabilities can vary depending on age, as well as the combination and severity of each individual disability.
Conclusion
Disability affects people in many different ways and can be related to mobility, sensory features, intellectual capabilities and daily activity. Understanding the different types and the characteristics of disability can contribute to increased awareness and support. No two individuals are affected in the same way, and disability is also influenced by the physical, social and cultural world. Creating awareness and recognising these differences is undoubtedly a step forward.
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