Physical and Developmental Disabilities

Disability may be single or multiple, and include loss or impairment of manual dexterity, mobility, vision, hearing, and mental or emotional function.
In a sense, everyone is disabled at one time or another and unable to perform a task because of physical limitations or environmental barriers. When this happens, people try to minimize the limitation, modify the environment, or both. For example, to take a job on the hundredth floor of a building requires either sufficient physical stamina to make the climb each day or the use of an adaptive piece of equipment (an elevator). If the elevator is undependable and stamina is inadequate for the climb, the individual having to work in such a location would be handicapped.
Everyone constantly compensates for disabilities by altering or removing handicaps. The inconvenience and fatigue of walking from suburb to city is modified by using a car or a bus. A bridge or a boat makes it possible to cross a river without having t o swim.
Resources for the disabled are a means of helping individuals modify their environment so that they are no longer handicapped in doing what they want to do. Elevators, cars, and bridges are taken for granted as necessary for the public good. For those with additional limitations, more modifications-such as braille signs and curb cuts-make it possible to live without being handicapped by the environment.
Although people with physical and developmental disabilities are a vast and diverse group, they are too often lumped together as though they represented a homogeneous group. What they do share is a need for modification of the environment to achieve maximum potential and the most independence. This need presents a challenge for the disabled, their families, and society as a whole.
Until early in the 20th century those with disabilities were often hidden away and cared for within the home or segregated in institutions. Advances in medicine and technology and the exigencies and ravages of modern warfare (which have produced many veterans with disabilities) have changed the picture entirely, but unfortunately, the old attitudes sometimes linger.






**All of this information was compiled from The Complete Home Medical Guide.