Learning disability in the context of "Cognitive impairment"

Schistosomiasis, also known as snail fever, bilharzia, and Katayama fever is a neglected tropical disease caused by parasitic flatworms called schistosomes. It affects both humans and animals. It affects the urinary tract or the intestines. Symptoms include abdominal pain, diarrhea, bloody stool, or blood in the urine. Those who have been infected for a long time may experience liver damage, kidney failure, infertility, or bladder cancer. In children, schistosomiasis may cause poor growth and learning difficulties. Schistosomiasis belongs to the group of helminth infections.

Schistosomiasis is spread by contact with fresh water contaminated with parasites released from infected freshwater snails. Diagnosis is made by finding the parasite's eggs in a person's urine or stool. It can also be confirmed by finding antibodies against the disease in the blood.

A screen reader is a form of assistive technology (AT) that renders text and image content as speech or braille output. Screen readers are essential to blind people, and are also useful to people who are visually impaired, illiterate or learning-disabled. Screen readers are software applications that attempt to convey what people with normal eyesight see on a display to their users via non-visual means, like text-to-speech, sound icons, or a braille device. They do this by applying a wide variety of techniques that include, for example, interacting with dedicated accessibility APIs, using various operating system features (like inter-process communication and querying user interface properties), and employing hooking techniques.

Microsoft Windows operating systems have included the Microsoft Narrator screen reader since Windows 2000, though separate products such as Freedom Scientific's commercially available JAWS screen reader and ZoomText screen magnifier and the free and open source screen reader NVDA by NV Access are more popular for that operating system. Apple Inc.'s macOS, iOS, and tvOS include VoiceOver as a built-in screen reader, while Google's Android provides the Talkback screen reader and its ChromeOS can use ChromeVox. Similarly, Android-based devices from Amazon provide the VoiceView screen reader. There are also free and open source screen readers for Linux and Unix-like systems, such as Speakup and Orca.

Special education (also known as special-needs education, aided education, alternative provision, exceptional student education, special ed., SDC, and SPED) is the practice of educating students in a way that accommodates their individual differences, disabilities, and special needs. This involves the individually planned and systematically monitored arrangement of teaching procedures, adapted equipment and materials, and accessible settings. These interventions are designed to help individuals with special needs achieve a higher level of personal self-sufficiency and success in school and in their community, which may not be available if the student were only given access to a typical classroom education.

Special education aims to provide accommodated education for students with disabilities such as learning disabilities, learning difficulties (such as dyslexia), communication disorders, emotional and behavioral disorders, physical disabilities (such as osteogenesis imperfecta, down syndrome, lissencephaly, Sanfilippo syndrome, and muscular dystrophy), developmental disabilities (such as autism spectrum disorder, and intellectual disabilities) and other disabilities. Students with disabilities are likely to benefit from additional educational services such as different approaches to teaching, the use of technology, a specifically adapted teaching area, a resource room, or a separate classroom.

Dysgraphia is a neurological disorder and learning disability that concerns impairments in written expression, which affects the ability to write, primarily handwriting, but also coherence. It is a specific learning disability (SLD) as well as a transcription disability, meaning that it is a writing disorder associated with impaired handwriting, orthographic coding and finger sequencing (the movement of muscles required to write). It often overlaps with other learning disabilities and neurodevelopmental disorders such as speech impairment, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) or developmental coordination disorder (DCD).

In the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), dysgraphia is not mentioned. Dyslexia is characterized as a neurodevelopmental disorder under the umbrella category of specific learning disorder.

Neurodevelopmental disorders are a group of mental conditions negatively affecting the development of the nervous system, which includes the brain and spinal cord. According to the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5) published in 2013, these conditions generally appear in early childhood, usually before children start school, and can persist into adulthood. The key characteristic of all these disorders is that they negatively impact a person's functioning in one or more domains of life (personal, social, academic, occupational) depending on the disorder and deficits it has caused. All of these disorders and their levels of impairment exist on a spectrum, and affected individuals can experience varying degrees of symptoms and deficits, despite having the same diagnosis.

The DSM-5 classifies neurodevelopmental disorders into six overarching groups: intellectual, communication, autism, attention deficit hyperactivity, motor, and specific learning disorders. Often one disorder is accompanied by another.

Dyslexia, also known as "word blindness", is a learning disability that affects either reading or writing. Different people are affected to different degrees. Problems may include difficulties in spelling words, reading quickly, writing words, "sounding out" words in the head, pronouncing words when reading aloud and understanding what one reads. Often these difficulties are first noticed at school. The difficulties are involuntary, and people with this disorder have a normal desire to learn. People with dyslexia have higher rates of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), developmental language disorders, and difficulties with numbers.

Dyslexia is believed to be caused by the interaction of genetic and environmental factors. Some cases run in families. Dyslexia that develops due to a traumatic brain injury, stroke, or dementia is sometimes called "acquired dyslexia" or alexia. The underlying mechanisms of dyslexia result from differences within the brain's language processing. Dyslexia is diagnosed through a series of tests of memory, vision, spelling, and reading skills. Dyslexia is separate from reading difficulties caused by hearing or vision problems or by insufficient teaching or opportunity to learn.

Invisible disabilities, also known as hidden disabilities or non-visible disabilities (NVDs), are disabilities that are not immediately apparent. They are typically chronic illnesses and conditions that significantly impair normal activities of daily living.

For example, some people with visual or auditory disabilities who do not wear glasses or hearing aids, or who use discreet hearing aids, may not be obviously disabled. Some people who have vision loss may wear contact lenses.

Dyscalculia is a learning disability resulting in difficulty learning or comprehending arithmetic, such as difficulty in understanding numbers, numeracy, learning how to manipulate numbers, performing mathematical calculations, and learning facts in mathematics. It is sometimes colloquially referred to as "math dyslexia", though this analogy can be misleading as they are distinct syndromes.

Dyscalculia is associated with dysfunction in the region around the intraparietal sulcus and potentially also the frontal lobe. Dyscalculia does not reflect a general deficit in cognitive abilities or difficulties with time, measurement, and spatial reasoning. Estimates of the prevalence of dyscalculia range between three and six percent of the population. In 2015, it was established that 11% of children with dyscalculia also have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Dyscalculia has also been associated with Turner syndrome and people who have spina bifida.