To a proper understanding of the concept of disability

Al-Folk Charitable Foundation presents a series of interesting educational and scientific articles that include everything related to Down syndrome heroes. We will learn about the nature of their bodies, mental abilities and behaviors, and how to deal with them and develop their abilities. The World Health Organization defines the word “disability” as: a term that covers incapability, and restrictions on activity and involvement.  Incapability means any problem in body function or structure.

Until the middle of the twentieth century, the society used the term (handicapped) to refer to everyone who had a disability, then it was replaced by the word (people with disabilities), because the word handicapped means amputees or those with paralysis.  As for “disability”, it is more comprehensive in cases of permanent disabilities.

The World Health Organization defines the word disability as: a term that covers incapability, and restrictions on activity and involvement.  Incapability means any problem in body function or structure. Restriction on activity represents a difficulty that the individual faces when carrying out a task or work, while restriction on involvement is the problem that the individual suffers from in terms of participating in life situations. Therefore, disability is a complex phenomenon that reveals the interaction between the features of both a person’s body and of the society in which they live.

Several definitions of disability emerged, perhaps the most important of which are:

It is a condition that reduces the ability of the individual to perform one or more of the basic functions in daily life, such as taking care of himself or practicing social relations and economic activities within the limits that are considered normal.

Or: it is the inability of a person to obtain self-sufficiency and make him in constant need of the help of others, and a special education that helps him overcome his disability.

It is a state of incapability for individuals due to a partial or complete loss of physical, sensory or mental abilities.

The term (disability) may be used to refer to the mental or physical features that some institutions, especially medical institutions, consider a need that should be addressed (the medical model).  It may also refer to the restrictions imposed on persons by the handicaps of a society in which there is discrimination against persons with disabilities (the social model), or the term may be used to refer to the identity of persons with disabilities. Psychological functional ability is a measure of an individual’s level of performance that measures a person’s ability to perform physical tasks in daily life and how easy it is to perform these tasks. Psychological functional ability also declines with age, causing disability, cognitive and physical disturbances, and all of this may lead to naming these individuals persons with disabilities.

Disability in general is defined as a physical, mental or psychological injury that causes harm to the individual’s physical or mental development, or both, and may affect his psychological state and the development of his education and training, and thus the individual becomes with special needs (disabled). Hence the person has less physical functions, perception, or both than his peers of the same age. And the concept of disability will remain controversial, as it has different meanings in different societies.

It is worth noting that disability is not a disease but a marked delay in normal development (physical, sensory, mental, behavioral, linguistic and educational), in a way that causes special difficulties (other individuals do not have it), which requires the provision of a special approach to growth and education that includes well-prepared tools and methods, on a scientific, educational and psychological basis in particular. In fact, disability is not the result of one cause, but rather a group of health, genetic, cultural and social causes and factors; those causes differ from one society to another and from time to time.

Some people may be born with a disability and may suffer from it after birth as a result of accidents, diseases or wars. Some people believe that chronic diseases such as asthma, diabetes, heart disease, hypertension and hypotension are types of disability. But the truth is that all of these diseases do not deprive individuals of their mental, physical or sensory capabilities, however, they only make them work with less efficiency.

The disabled person

A disabled person in general is a person who cannot do something except with the help of others. This means that all human beings are disabled in one way or another, because every individual needs help in some area to be able to do their jobs well. We are all disabled and have special needs.

There are two main trends in defining what is meant by a person with a disability (or a handicapped):

The first: It is the person who suffers from a certain disability in one of his body parts, which makes him unable to adapt to society normally. That is, disability in this case means the inability of the individual to meet the requirements to fulfill their normal role in life, in terms of their age, gender, and social and cultural characteristics, as a result of injury or disability in the performance of physiological or psychological functions. The scope of this meaning includes the various types of disabilities, such as mental, auditory, visual and physical disability and learning difficulties.

And the second trend believes that the word (disabled) is not limited to the mere affliction of the individual with a specific disability in one of their body parts, but rather extends to include, in addition to that, any condition that impedes the individual from performing their normal role in society, even if this is not a result of his physical disability in their body parts. Thus, the disabled person is (a person who has weak chances of securing a suitable job, keeping it and gets promoted in it due to a legally recognized physical or mental deficiency). A person then may develop a state of introversion and social isolation that makes him unable to adapt to members of the surrounding community despite the soundness of his body parts, and this concept of disability also includes so-called behavior disorders and cultural conflicts of the person.

The disabled person is not only the one who uses a wheelchair and needs a special way for him or the blind who needs a stick and a high edge in order to feel safe in the street or the deaf who needs his own hearing aid and many others, but also whoever does not consider persons with a disabilities human beings who deserve all care and provision of suitable conditions to live a decent, semi-independent life. The person is then also considered disabled because of this way of thinking and deficient mentality.

He is a person who differs from common in society in his characteristic or personal ability, whether it is apparent such as paralysis, amputation of limbs, blindness or not apparent, as is the case in mental retardation, deafness or behavioral and emotional disabilities and this difference is over the common level in a way that requires an amendment in the educational and life variables in a manner consistent with the and capabilities of the disabled person – no matter how limited they are – so that it is possible to develop those capabilities to the maximum possible extent.

It is every person suffering from complete or partial deficiency in a stable way in his physical, sensory, mental, communicative or psychological abilities, to the extent that it reduces the possibility of meeting his normal requirements like his peers who are non-disabled.