What You Need to Know about NICHCY’s Disability Fact Sheets

What You Need to Know about NICHCY’s Disability Fact Sheets

By Elaine Mulligan, Project Director, National Dissemination Center for Children with Disabilities (NICHCY) 

Are you an educator with a new student in your class who has Attention Deficit /Hyperactivity Disorder (AD/HD)? If so, there’s a NICHCY fact sheet that can help you prepare. 

Are you a parent whose child was recently identified as having a learning disability? If so, there’s a NICHCY’s fact sheet that can help you understand how that disability affects learning. 

NICHCY’s online Disability Fact Sheet series are the most visited pages on our website, and it’s no wonder! Each fact sheet includes a definition, causes, characteristics, incidence, educational considerations and helpful organizations for further information. Most also include available supports (broken down by age group), tips for teachers and parents and a brief story of a child with that particular disability. The fact sheets are a great starting point for anyone who is living or working with a child who has a disability. 

What Fact Sheets Does NICHCY Offer?

NICHCY offers fact sheets on the following topics: 

• Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (AD/HD) *
• Autism Spectrum Disorders*
• Blindness/Visual Impairment*
• Cerebral Palsy*
• Deaf-Blindness
• Deafness and Hearing Loss*
• Developmental Delay
• Down Syndrome*
• Emotional Disturbance*
• Epilepsy*
• Intellectual Disability*
• Learning Disabilities*
• Other Health Impairment
• Rare Disorders
• Speech and Language Impairments*
• Spina Bifida*
• Tourette Syndrome
• Traumatic Brain Injury*

These fact sheets are easy to read and easy to share. The ones with an asterisk (*) next to the topic name are also available in Spanish. Our most popular fact sheets are Intellectual Disability, Speech and Language Impairments, Emotional Disturbance and Other Health Impairment.

Why Should You Use NICHCY’s Fact Sheets

Of course there are great resources available on specific disabilities from a variety of medical sources, disability-specific advocacy organizations and education professionals. However, there are also a few less-than-accurate sources online that can be distracting and difficult to wade through.

NICHCY does the work of collecting the reliable information you need to get started on your search for information and puts it all in one place. We present accurate information that is written specifically to meet the needs of parents and educators, and include links to trusted sources so you can continue gathering information effectively. 

How Can You Use the Fact Sheets?

First and foremost, the fact sheets are a starting point for building your own knowledge base. They’re also great to share with family members. If your child has recently been identified with a disability, it can be exhausting to repeatedly explain the condition to aunts, uncles and grandparents. Share a fact sheet instead, and empower that person to learn on his or her own. Parents can even share this information at Individualized Education Program (IEP) meetings. 

Educators can share the fact sheets with colleagues or families of children with disabilities, or collect all of them in an information binder for their staff’s professional development library. The “Education Implications” and “Tips for Teachers” sections of the fact sheets are excellent resources for general educators. 

NICHCY’s materials are always copyright-free, so you can share them freely, either in print or electronically. Visit http://nichcy.org/disability/specific and help yourself!

Elaine Mulligan is the Project Director of the National Dissemination Center for Children with Disabilities (NICHCY). Prior to joining NICHCY, Elaine was the Assistant Director of the NIUSI-LeadScape principal leadership academy initiative. She also has extensive experience as a classroom teacher.