Pertains to persons who possess musculoskeletal disorders, neural disorders, cardiac disorders, hearing disorders, emotional disorders, and intellectual disorders. This term, however, has recently been replaced by the term handicapable.
A physical or mental condition which prevents someone from doing some everyday activities.
Impairment or disability resulting in a disadvantage for a given person in performing normal activities of daily living.
Partial or total inability to perform a social, occupational, or other activity. It reflects the extent to which an individual is disadvantaged by some partial or total malfunction when compared with those in a peer group who have no such malfunction. A handicap is usually related to an identifiable structural abnormality, often based on a range of two standard deviations from the mean observation obtained from studying a large number of apparently healthy subjects. The alternative terms impairment (for abnormality) and disability (for malfunction) are now accepted by many authorities but their use may sometimes cause confusion.
The inability to carry out a social, occupational or other activity that could normally be done by a person without such a handicap. The handicap may be partial or complete, physical or mental, and may result from disease, injury or inherited disorder. The extent of the handicap is measured against the normal function of those of the same age, sex etc. The impairment may be functionally rather than physically based, in which case the affected person may not always be aware of it until revealed by a clinical examination. Considerable government and voluntary community efforts have been made to lessen the day-to-day difficulties of living faced by disabled people. Increasingly, public buildings, houses and vehicles are being modified to ensure that these are user-friendly to such individuals. The health and social-work professions also contribute to reducing the impact of handicaps on affected individuals.
A term frequently used as a synonym for “disability” or “functional limitation.” The word “handicap” is now viewed as a pejorative term by many individuals. Handicap has been viewed by the International Classification of Impairments, Disabilities, and Handicaps as the social consequence of the inability to carry out tasks or access certain aspects of the environment due to one or more impairments; in some social settings, it has been equated with social disadvantage relative to one’s peers. The terms “activity limitation” or “participation restriction” are preferred by many specialists in physical, occupational, and speech therapy as well as those in related fields.
Handicap refers to the degree to which a physical or mental impairment hampers a person’s usual abilities and results in certain disadvantages for them.