Sensory Disability
A disability that can affect one or more of the senses.
Sensory disabilities can affect one or more of a person’s senses. These may include touch, hearing, sight, taste, smell or spatial awareness.
NADO supports people with varying sensory disabilities, the most common of which are described below:
NADO also provides a quality range of sensory therapeutic and educational items to people of all ages and abilities.
Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD)
The research has shown that around 1 in 200 Australians have autism and boys are four times more likely to have autism than girls.
Autism is a lifelong developmental condition which refers to a range of conditions characterised by difficulties in social interactions, nonverbal communication, speech, restricted and repetitive behaviours, in addition to various sensory sensitivities.
The word spectrum reflects the wide range of challenges and strengths that people on the spectrum experience and are possessed by each person with autism.
The cause of ASD is not well understood, but it is a developmental disability thought to have neurological or genetic causes (or both). For more information, please visit Autism Awareness Australia
Blindness and Hearing Loss
Blindness and low vision can occur as a result of a number of different diseases, conditions or accidents.
Some eye conditions are congenital (present at or near birth), while others are caused later in life. Vision loss can affect people of all ages, but it is more common with two-thirds of people with vision loss being over the age of 65.
Hearing loss can occur as a result of damaging to any part of the external, middle, or inner ear can cause hearing loss which can range from being mild to profound.
If someone is born with hearing loss, this is known as congenital deafness, whereas if hearing loss occurs after birth is it known as adventitious deafness. The most common cause of adventitious deafness is noise.
For more information, please visit Vision Australia and Deaf Australia
Sensory Processing Disorder
Sensory processing disorder is a condition that causes difficulties receiving and responding to information from the senses including vision, hearing, touch, smell, and taste.
When someone has a sensory processing disorder, the brain has difficulty organising and defining the external sensory information. The brain perceives and analyses the information in an unusual way. Someone with sensory processing disorder may have heightened or lowered sensitivity to stimuli such as tolerating light, being touched, sound, eye contact, and pain.
For more information, please visit Sensory and processing Disorder Australia
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