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The percentage of North Americans who have one or more physical disabilities continues to rise. Specifically, the percentage of people with ambulatory disabilities, cognitive disabilities, and other health impairments is increasing every year. This phenomenon calls for pragmatic measures to help provide better transition and related services to students with physical disabilities and other health impairments. It is anticipated that well-planned collaborative transition services provided to students with physical disabilities and other health impairments will result in improved quality of life and independent living in the community. In this chapter, we discuss transition and transition-related services, supporting legislation for persons with disabilities, transition from rehabilitation centers and hospitals to job settings and community-based programs.

In this chapter, we discuss the use of technology to enhance learning for students with physical disabilities and other health impairments. In recent years, there has been significant growth in numbers, diversity, and academic orientation of persons with physical disabilities and other health impairments; therefore, it is incumbent on special educators to adopt and use appropriate emerging innovative technology to enhance student learning. Impactful laws (Americans with Disabilities Act [ADA], Every Student Succeeds Act, Individuals with Disability Education Act, and Title II of ADA) provide impetus for advancing the policies on the use of technology by students with physical disabilities and other health impairments in the United States. The International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) Standards also guide the development of educators' digital literacies and pedagogical practices that will harness technology for student learning. This chapter is organized around the ISTE Standards, US Department of Education policies, and the use of technology to aid students with physical disabilities and other health impairments.

Students with physical and health impairments represent a small but growing group of individuals with diverse educational needs. They are those students whose physical limitations or health problems interfere with school attendance or learning to such an extent that special services, training, equipment, materials, or facilities are required. Therefore, the purpose of this chapter is to discuss some of these impairments and acquaint both general and special educators with interventions for helping students with physical and health impairments succeed.

The kinds of disabilities people experience frequently require “special” approaches to accommodate them in inclusive environments. In general, these people include students with physical disabilities and other health impairments. In a bid to provide diverse educational services for these students, scholars, educators, and government agencies have advocated for educational provisions in inclusive environments. A logical extension is that physical education classes can be taught in inclusive classrooms. The question is: How do we provide inclusive programs for students with physical disabilities and health impairments? This chapter answers this question by providing pedagogical strategies and opportunities for collaborative ventures for all professionals who work with students with physical disabilities and other health impairments.

All over the world, different types of disabilities affect people and their quality of life. And schools, families, and federal and state agencies are obligated to play very important roles in advancing special education values for students with physical and other health impairments. To maintain and advance these values, the needs of students must be met to the greatest extent possible. Advancing values comes with recognizing the strengths, preferences, interests, related services, community experiences, development of employment, other postschool adult living objectives, and the acquisition of daily living skills. The question is, are these values consistently met, especially for students with physical and other health impairments? This chapter answers this question by discussing how these values can be met and advanced for students with physical and other health impairments.

The purpose of this study is to determine the extent to which two existing models of information behaviour could explain the information behaviour of visually impaired people seeking health and social care information.

The research was conducted within a constructivist paradigm. A total of 28 semi‐structured interviews (face‐to‐face or telephone) with 31 visually impaired people were conducted. Framework analysis was used to analyse the results.

This study identified several factors that may affect a visually impaired person's information behaviour. These related to the presence of other health conditions or disabilities, participants' understanding of the word “information”, their interactions with information providers, their degree of independence, the support they received from friends and family, their acceptance of their own visual impairment, as well as their awareness of other visual impairments, their registration status and their willingness and ability to pay for aids, adaptations and equipment.

This study provides a new and valuable insight into the information behaviour of visually impaired people, as well as testing the applicability of a specific and generic information model to the information behaviour of visually impaired people seeking health and social care information.

In this chapter, we discuss health-related physical fitness and motor development assessments for students with physical disabilities or other health impairments in special education using traditional and innovative techniques. Traditional assessment techniques are those that are more standardized and formalized, while innovative assessment techniques refer to new variations or ways (alternative/authentic) to assess the abilities of students with physical disabilities and other health impairments. According to the United States Department of Education (2009), students with disabilities must be included in State and local assessments. Even though there has been significant growth in numbers, diversity and academic orientation of persons with physical disabilities, assessments practices have largely remained the same over the years. Adopting innovative pedagogies and emerging innovative assessment techniques may address some unmet needs of current students with disabilities faced with assessment biases.

This chapter is structured for teaching young learners with other health impairments in special education. Under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act (IDEA, 2004), other health impairments represent chronic or acute health problems such as asthma, attention deficit disorder or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), diabetes, epilepsy, a heart condition, hemophilia, lead poisoning, leukemia, nephritis, rheumatic fever, and sickle cell anemia and adversely affect a child’s educational performance. The chapter is organized around definitions, prevalence, etiologies, intervention strategies, and teaching considerations for selected disabling conditions in this disability category.

Throughout the ages, caring for an individual with a significant physical disability and/or health impairment has been extremely difficult or perhaps even impossible. Conditions for survival were often hard, requiring all able-bodied family members working from dawn until dark to scratch out even a minimal standard of living. Consequently, little time and resources were available for the care of a loved one with a disability. Safford and Safford's sobering volume (1996) emphasizes that children have always been vulnerable to neglect and children with disabilities were particularly subject to abuse. To illustrate this, children with disabilities were particularly subject to infanticide, abandonment, slavery, sterilization or placed in orphanages, where maiming sometimes occurred to increase the individuals' potential for street corner begging.

New research by the authors in the London Borough of Merton challenges three commonly held assumptions ‐ that mental health service users do not want to work, that work will make their condition worse, and that what they are really best suited to is sheltered work.