Each and every one of us is unique, possessing different characteristics and living a different life from everyone else. However, most of us have a common set of abilities and skills that are generally taken for granted by most people. And in some cases and for different circumstances, some people lose or have not developed these skills in the same way as the majority of the population.

These persons may, as a result, suffer from various difficulties in different aspects of their lives, and may suffer from different types of disability , depending on the type of problems or the abilities or organs that present some kind of alteration. And it is regarding these different types of disabilities that we are going to talk about in this article.

What is disability?

We understand disability to be any situation in which a subject sees his/her participation limited in some type of scope or action , due to the existence of some type of impairment in some organ or intellectual capacity. This is, in itself, the existence of a limitation, being not a cause but a consequence.

The existence of a disability therefore implies a difficulty or obstacle for the participation of the subject in society or in some aspect or vital domain in comparison with the possibilities presented by those persons without the impairment in question or even the subject himself at an earlier time in his life.

However, the disability does not mean that the person who has it cannot reach and carry out the same activities as long as there is an aid adapted to his needs.

The different types of disability

As we have indicated previously, there is not only one type of disability, but we can find different classifications depending on the type of problem in which difficulties are presented. Thus, we can establish different large types of disability, with the first three being the ones that are most considered.

Physical disability

This receives the name of physical or motor disability to all those types of limitations generated by the presence of a problem linked to a decrease or elimination of motor or physical abilities , such as the physical loss of a limb or of its habitual functionality.

This type of disability arises in the context of spinal problems, traffic accidents, head trauma, medical illness generating physical limitation, amputations, congenital malformations or strokes.

2. Sensory disability

Sensory disability refers to the existence of limitations derived from the existence of impairments in any of the senses that allow us to perceive the environment, whether external or internal . There are impairments in all of the senses, although the most well known are visual and hearing impairments.

3. Intellectual disability

Intellectual disability is defined as any limitation in intellectual functioning that hinders social participation or the development of autonomy or in areas such as academia or work, having an IQ below 70 and influencing different cognitive skills and social participation. There are different degrees of intellectual disability , which have different implications on the level of the type of difficulties that they may present.

4. Psychic disability

We speak of mental disability when we are faced with a situation in which alterations of a behavioural type and adaptive behaviour are presented, generally derived from the suffering of some type of mental disorder.

5. Visceral disability

This little known type of disability appears in those persons who suffer from some type of deficiency in one of their organs, which generates limitations in the life and participation in the community of the subject. This is the case of those who may generate diabetes or heart problems .

6. Multiple disabilities

This type of disability is that which is derived from a combination of limitations derived from some of the previous impairments. For example, a blind subject with an intellectual disability, or a paraplegic subject with deafness.