PHYSICAL DISABILITY
Definition of disability1
A disability is a condition or function which is significantly impaired, substantially limiting a person's major life activities. The term is used to refer to individual functioning, including physical impairment, sensory impairment, cognitive impairment, intellectual impairment, mental illness and various types of chronic diseases.
Physical disability
Physical disability can be divided into a number of sub-categories, which include the following:
- mobility1 and physical impairments
- spinal cord disability
- vision impairments
- hearing impairments
Mobility and physical impairments
This term refers to people with upper or lower limb(s) disability, manual dexterity or disability in coordinating different organs of the body. This disability can be inborn, acquired with age or the effect of a disease. Muscular dystrophy and multiple sclerosis (→ Module 1) belong to this category.
WARM UP
A physical disability can ...
a. be present at birth.
b. be the consequence of an accident.
c. be the effect of a disease.
d. Ail of the above.
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1 On the eve of the 2016 Paralympics, Jan Cocks coined the new term paradability to define people with disabilities.
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1 The word mobility is often used in collocations. Can you explain job mobility and social mobility?