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Chapter One: What Is Disability?

obvious. But many disabilities cannot be seen so easily—sometimes, you won’t even know someone has a disability unless he or she tells you. U.S. government agencies group disabilities into six main types: • Hearing, meaning that the person is either deaf or has a great deal of trouble hearing. • Visual, meaning that the person is either blind or has a great deal of trouble seeing. • Cognitive, meaning that person has a lot of trouble concentrating, learning, remembering, or making decisions. • Ambulatory, meaning that the person has a lot of trouble walking. • Self-care, meaning that the person has a lot of trouble getting dressed, taking baths or showers, or performing other basic tasks to look after himself or herself. • Independent living, meaning that the person has a lot of trouble with things like grocery shopping or getting to doctor’s appointments—things that are usually expected of adults who live on their own. In addition to these six categories, the disabilities that veterans experience are

sometimes considered separately. A veteran might have any of the six types of disabilities, or several of them at the same time. But because of the way in which veterans became disabled—that is, on the battlefield—some experts like to consider veterans as a separate group from those who were disabled at birth or who acquired a disability due to illness or accident. According to the U.S. census, about 19 percent of Americans have some form of disability—that’s about

Braille is a system invented in 1824 to make it possible for visually impaired people to read.