Disability: What types of disabilities are there?

How many people have a disability?

According to data from the Federal Statistical Office from 2011, 7.3 million people in Germany have severe disability status. This corresponds to a population share of 8.9 percent. The results also showed that older people were more likely to have a disability than younger people:

• 29.2 percent were older than 75 years
• 45.8 percent were between 55 and 75 years old
• 4 percent were under 25 years old

Disabilities can be of very different types and origins. Nor are they easy to differentiate. In some cases, multiple disabilities may be present at the same time. Others lead to further impairments. Basically, disabilities are classified into the following categories:

types of disability

• Physical handicap: When a person is severely physically restricted, one speaks of a physical handicap. This limitation is caused by damage or dysfunction of the supporting and musculoskeletal organs. Polio is the most common physical disability in children.
• Intellectual disability: A permanent, clearly above-average limitation of cognitive abilities is referred to as an intellectual disability. Cognitive abilities include perception, attention, thinking and learning as well as memory, motivation and concentration. After physical handicaps, mental disabilities such as Down syndrome are among the most common types of impairments.
• Sensory impairment: The sensory impairment serves as a generic term for all hearing and visual impairments, such as hearing impairment, deafness, blindness, ametropia and deaf-blindness.
• Speech disability: Speech disability serves as a generic term for disorders of language acquisition, voice, speaking and fluency. Speech-impaired people are usually unable to use their mother tongue in speech and/or writing in an age-appropriate manner.
• Mental disability: Deviations in behavior and experience are summarized under a mental or emotional disability. However, one usually speaks of mental illnesses that influence the way a person thinks, feels and acts. A well-known mental illness in children is ADHD , for example .
• Learning Disability: A learning disability refers to a persistent and extensive learning impairment. Prevalence of learning disabilities is difficult to predict as they are not recorded as such in disability statistics.

cause of disability

A disability can also be classified as to its cause, depending on whether it is congenital or postnatal. Congenital disabilities are either chromosomal, caused by the inheritance process, or caused by prenatal damage that occurs before birth. Disabilities that only occur after birth, on the other hand, can arise as a result of the birth process, illness, physical damage or the aging process. According to the Federal Statistical Office, the disabilities were caused by:

• 83.4 percent due to an illness
• In 4.1 percent, the disability was congenital or occurred in the first year of life
• 1.9 percent due to an accident or an occupational disease
• At 0.6 percent through damage in war, military or civilian service