Low Incidence Disabilities

A low incidence disability can be defined as a severe disability with an expected incidence rate of less than 1 percent of the total school age population.  Low incidence disabilities include hearing impairments, visual impairments, and severe orthopedic impairments.

Indicators

Low incidence disabilities consist of a number of disorders which are all different from one another.  Characteristics of low incidence disabilities differ from one disability to the next.  Some can be identified by definition while others are more in depth.

• Blindness - a condition of lacking visual perception due to physiological or neurological factors.

• Deafness - a condition in which individuals are fully unable to detect or perceive frequencies of sound which can typically be heard by those who can hear.
• Severe Orthopedic Impairments - an orthopedic impairment that adversely affects a child's educational performance.  Includes:
• Bone disease - any of the diseases or injuries that affect human bones.
• Brachial Plexus/Erb's Palsy - an injury caused by trauma during birth which affects shoulder motion and elbow flexion.
• Cerebral Palsy - a condition caused by damage to the part of the brain (cerebrum) which controls communication skills, memory, and the ability to learn. 
• Hydrocephalus - a condition in which the primary characteristic is excessive accumulation of fluid in the brain.
• Muscular Dystrophy - a group of inherite d muscle disease in which muscle fibers are unusually susceptible to damage and become progressively weaker.
• Poliomyelitis - a contagious viral illness that in its most severe form causes paralysis, difficulty breathing and sometimes death.
• Scoliosis - a sideways curvature of the spine that occurs most often during the growth spurt just before puberty.
• Spina Bifida - a group of birth defects (neural tube defects) where the embryonic structure that eventually develops into the baby's brain, spinal cord and the tissues that enclose them are defected.
• Spinal Cord Injury - an injury that causes permanent disability or loss of movement (paralysis) and sensation below the site of the injury.
• Spinal Muscular Atrophies - a genetic disease affecting the part of the nervous system that controls voluntary muscle movement.

• Other Health Impairments (OHI) - According to IDEA, OHI means "having limited strength, vitality, or alertness, including a heightened alertness to environmental stimuli, that results in limited alertness with respect to the educational environment, that— 

                  (i) Is due to chronic or acute health problems such as asthma, attention deficit disorder or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, diabetes, epilepsy, a heart condition, hemophilia, lead poisoning, leukemia, nephritis, rheumatic fever, sickle cell anemia, and Tourette syndrome; and
                  (ii) Adversely affects a child’s educational performance. [§300.8(c)(9)]" 

Here is a list of OHI discussed in IDEA:

• Diabetes - a disease in which the body does not produce or use insulin properly. 

• Epilepsy - a physical condition that occurs when there is a sudden, brief change in how the brain works.

• Heart Conditions - a broad term used to describe a range of diseases that affect your heart, and in some cases, your blood vessels. 

• Hemophilia - a rare and inherited disorder in which your blood doesn’t clot properly. 

• Lead Poisoning - poisoning occurs when lead builds up in the body

  over a period of time and causes serious problems.

• Leukemia - a cancer of the bone marrow and blood which develops when the marrow produces too many white blood cells.

• Nephritis - develops when one or both of a person's kidneys are inflamed.

• Rheumatic Fever - developed as a complication of untreated or poorly treated strep throat or scarlet fever, not common in the U.S.

• Sickle Cell Anemia - a condition where an individual's blood has less than a normal number of red blood cells or the red blood cells themselves don't have enough hemoglobin.

• Tourette Syndrome - an inherited neurobiological disorder characterized by tics (involuntary, rapid, sudden movements) and/or vocal outbursts that occur repeatedly.

Prevalance

OHI represents approximately 7.5 percent of all students having a classification in special education, or less than 1% of all school-age students.

UDL Accommodations

Because of the wide range of low incidence disabilities, there are a number of academic and behavioral accommodations.  These are only a few things that can be done for students to learn in the least restrictive environment:

References:

http://aim.cast.org/learn/historyarchive/backgroundpapers/promise_of_udl/what_l-i_d

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1337593/Do-right-tell-disabled-live.html?ito=feeds-newsxml

http://www.mayoclinic.com/

http://www.mayoclinic.org/

http://www.mdausa.org/publications/fa-sma-qa.html

http://www.mhu.k12.ca.us/documents/Special_Ed/Low%20Incidence%20Disability.pdf

http://www.napcse.org/exceptionalchildren/orthopedicimpairments.php

http://www.naset.org/2278.0.html

http://www.nichcy.org/Disabilities/Specific/Pages/healthimpairment.aspx#anchor1

http://www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/hydrocephalus/detail_hydrocephalus.htm#151043125

Back to top