A people with disability is any citizen who lacks any of physical organs or capacity or suffers any significant mental impairment, such as loss of limbs, quadriplegia, visual or hearing impairment or mental handicap etc., which significantly causes difference from non-disabled people. The definition of each category of disability is an important consideration for assessment of the situation for people with disabilities.
Reference to the Inter-Ministerial Circular of Ministry of Social Affairs, Labours, Vocational Training and Youth Rehabilitation, and Ministry of Health, No. 14 MOSALVY dated July 24, 2003 has been stipulated the definitions, categories of disabilities as follows:
| Type of disability | Definition | Disabilities |
|---|---|---|
| Seeing difficulties | Person who has short sighted, low visions or could not see any objects. | Ex: Blind one/both eyes, optic nerve damage, dislocated lens (could not see), pterygium, trachoma, squint, miopia, ptosis (eyes with weak muscle), corneal scar, trichinosis, hypohema, retinitis, retinitipigmentosa, lagoptahalmos, entrotion. |
| Hearing difficulties | Person who has hearing impaired (at birth, injury or disease) and Old age. | Ex: Deaf, person with no ears, ear without ear drum(s), perforation of ear drum(s), otitis media infection. |
| Speaking difficulties | Person who has difficulty in saying words and could not say clearly enough or at all or not being understood by other. | Ex: Person with speech impairment, cleft lip, cleft palate, cleft lip and palate, big tongue, slurred (speech not clear), person with teeth problem, mute. |
| Moving difficulties | Person who has physically difficulty in moving from one place to other, or to move of his/her part of body with difficult or could not move at all. | Ex: Amputee arm(s)/leg(s), polio, muscular dystrophy, contracture, fracture, tight muscles, cerebral palsy, club foot/feet, bow leg(s), drop wrist, drop foot/feet, congenital deformity, paraplegia, hemiplegia, quadriplegia, paralysis, spinal cord curve, juvenile, arthritis, osteoarthritis, tuberculosis bone, hunchback, osteoporosis, kiphosis, lordosis, (inward curvature of the spine), scoliosis, erb’s palsy, dislocated hip, spinal cord injury, spinal bifida, sprain, burn, rickets. |
| Feeling difficulties | Person who lost sensation or does not feel anything while touching objects. | Ex: 3rd degree of leprosy, person who get severe beriberi (numbness) on the hand(s)/leg(s), kwashiorkor. |
| Psychological difficulties (strange behavior) | Person who changed behavior so much that now he/she behaves like a different person and it happens regularly or difficult in feeling, thinking and behavior. | Ex: Schizophrenia (psychosis), paranoia, neurosis, mania, stress, anxiety, depression, localize amnesia. |
| Learning difficulties | Person who has low memory, could not remember or do things like other person the same age do. | Ex: Mental retardation, down syndrome, slow learner, cretinism, cerebral palsy, autism. |
| People who have fits | Person who has often convulsion with frothing at the mouth. | Ex: Epilepsy, epileptic, seizures, hypoglycemia, hyperglycemia. |
| Others | Person who has restriction in physical or social function or can’t be classified in the above categories. | Ex: Disfigurement/deformity, chronic illness, dwarfs, midget, hydrocephalus, severe keloide, HIV. |
