Preschool children with disabilities become eligible for services upon reaching their third birthday.

The terms used in this definition are defined as follows:
NOTE: Preschool children may use the categories marked with asterisks (***) below, but it is not recommended.

1) Autism. Autism is a developmental disorder which is characterized by significant and pervasive impairment in several areas of development: reciprocal social interaction skills, communication skills, and the presence of restricted and/or repetitive behavior, interests and activities. This impairment, sometimes called Autism Spectrum Disorder, may include: Autistic Disorder, Atypical Autism (Pervasive Developmental Disorder--Not otherwise Specified), Asperger's Disorder, Rett's Disorder, Childhood Disintegrative Disorder or all Pervasive Developmental Disorders. These disorders can co-exist with other disorders such as mental retardation, learning disabilities, attention deficit disorder, Down Syndrome, or Tourette's Disorder.

***2) Behaviorally-Emotionally Disabled. Behaviorally-emotionally disabled students are students who, after receiving specially designed educational support services and intervention strategies in the regular educational setting, still exhibit patterns of situationally inappropriate interpersonal or intrapersonal behavior. The inappropriate behaviors must be long-standing patterns of behavior which occur regularly and often enough as to interfere consistently with the student's own learning process. A behavioral-emotional disability is evidenced by one or more of the following characteristics, which cannot be attributed primarily to physical, sensory, or intellectual deficits:
a) inability to achieve adequate academic progress (not due to a learning disability);
b) inability to maintain satisfactory interpersonal and/or intrapersonal relationships;
c) inappropriate or immature types of behavior or feelings under normal conditions;
d) a general pervasive mood of unhappiness or depression;
e) a tendency to develop physical symptoms, pains or fears associated with personal or school problems.
The term does not include the socially maladjusted student unless it is determined that he/she is also behaviorally-emotionally disabled.

***3) Deaf-Blind. Deaf-blind students have concomitant hearing and visual impairments, the combination of which causes such severe communication and other developmental and educational problems that they cannot be accommodated in special education programs solely for deaf or blind children.

4) Hearing Impaired. Hearing impaired children are those with hearing losses which are disabling educationally and develop-mentally and who, with or without amplification, may require various instructional modifications and related services in order to make full use of their learning opportunities. Hearing impaired is a generic term which includes deafness and all hearing losses ranging from mild to profound.

5) Mentally Disabled. Mentally disabled refers to significantly subaverage general cognitive functioning and a reduced rate of learning. This condition exists concurrently with deficits in adaptive behavior, is manifested during the developmental period, and adversely affects the student's educational performance.

***6) Multihandicapped. Multihandicapped students have a pervasive primary disability that is cognitive and/or behavioral in combination with one or more other disabilities, the combination of which causes such developmental and educational problems that the children cannot be accommodated in special programs that primarily serve one area of disability.

7) Orthopedically Impaired. Orthopedically impaired children possess a severe orthopedic impairment which adversely affects their educational performance. The term includes impairments caused by congenital abnormalities and impairments from other causes. Preschool children who are orthopedically impaired have an orthopedic impairment which adversely affects physical and motor development and which interferes with the acquisition of skills. The term includes impairments caused by congenital abnormalities and impairments from other causes.

8) Other Health Impaired. Other health-impaired students have chronic or acute health problems which cause limited strength, vitality or alertness, including a heightened alertness to environmental stimuli, to such an extent that special educational services are necessary. The health problems may include heart conditions, chronic lung disease, tuberculosis, rheumatic fever, nephritis, asthma, sickle cell anemia, hemophilia, epilepsy, lead poisoning, leukemia, diabetes, attention deficit disorder or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, genetic impairments or some other illness which may cause a student to have limited strength, vitality or alertness, adversely affecting educational performance or developmental progress.

9) Developmentally Delayed. Children identified in this area are those ages three through seven whose development and/or behavior is so significantly delayed or atypical that special education and related services are required.

***10) Specific Learning Disabled. Specific learning disability is an inclusive term used to denote various processing disorders presumed to be intrinsic to an individual (e.g., acquisition, organization, retrieval, or expressions of information). For the purpose of special education services, students classified as learning disabled are those who, after receiving instructional intervention in the regular education setting, have a substantial discrepancy between ability and achievement. The disability is manifested by substantial difficulties in the acquisition and use of skills in listening comprehension, oral expression, written expression, basic reading, reading comprehension, mathematics calculation, and mathematics reasoning. A learning disability may occur concomitantly with, but is not the primary result of other disabilities and/or environ-mental, cultural, and/or economic influences.

11) Speech-Language Impaired. A pupil who has a speech-language impairment has a disorder in articulation, language, voice, and/or fluency. A speech-language impairment may range in severity from mild to severe. It may be developmental or acquired, and pupils may demonstrate one or any combination of the four parameters listed above. A speech-language impairment may result in a primary disability or it may be secondary to other disabilities.

A communication difference/dialect is a variation of a symbol system used by a group of individuals which reflects and is determined by shared regional, social or cultural/ethnic factors and should not be considered a disorder of speech or language. The components of speech-language impairment include:
a) articulation. An articulation disorder is an abnormal, nondevelopmental production of phonemes (speech sounds). Types of misarticulations include omissions, substitutions, and distortions;
b) language. A language disorder is the impairment of comprehension and/or production of an oral communication system. The disorder may involve the form of language (phonologic, morphologic, and syntactic systems), the content of language (semantic system), the function of language (pragmatic system), and/or any combination of the above.
i) form of language
ii) Phonology is the sound system of a language and the linguistic rules that govern it; Morphology is the rule system that governs the structure of words and the elements of meaning used in their construction; Syntax is the linguistic rule governing the order and combination of words to form sentences, and the relationships among the elements within a sentence;
iii) content of language
iv) Semantics refers to the content or meaning of words and utterances;
v) function of language
Pragmatics refers to the social use of language and its appropriateness in a given situation;
c) voice. A voice disorder is an abnormal production of pitch (e.g., range, inflection, appropriateness), intensity (loudness), resonation (e.g., excessive nasality), and quality (e.g., breathiness, hoarseness, and harshness);
d) fluency. A fluency disorder is a disruption in the normal, rhythmic flow of speech that interferes with communication. The disorder may include, but not be limited to, frequency of dysfluencies, duration of dysfluencies, struggle and avoidance characteristics, and types of dysfluencies (repetition--phrases, whole words, syllables, and phonemes; prolongations; and blocks).

12) Traumatic Brain Injury. Traumatic brain injury is an acquired open or closed head injury caused by an external physical force that impairs a student's cognitive, communicative, perceptual, behavioral, social-emotional, and/or physical abilities to the extent that the student requires special education. Congenital, degenerative, or brain injuries induced by birth trauma are not included in this definition.

13) Visually Impaired.
e) functionally blind children have so little remaining vision that they use Braille as their reading medium. Preschool children who are functionally blind use predominantly tactile or auditory mediums in order to learn. In children for whom formal vision measures are not appropriate, sufficient documentation for low vision will include diagnosed pathology and functional assessment that describes visual deficits significant enough to interfere with learning;
f) partially seeing children have a loss of vision but are able to use regular or large type as their reading medium. These will generally be children who have a visual acuity between 20/70 and 20/200 in the better eye after correction. Preschool children with low vision have a loss of vision but are able to use the visual medium as their predominant means of learning. These generally will be children who have an actual or estimated visual acuity between 20/70 and 20/200 in the better eye after correction or whose visual impairment impedes the acquisition of developmental milestones;
g) children who are legally blind have a visual acuity of 20/200 or less in the better eye after correction or a peripheral field so contracted that the widest diameter subtends an arc no greater than 20 degrees.