Specific Learning Disabilities (SLD), also known as Learning Disabilities (LD), is a disability category used by the federal government to define a complex cluster of lifelong neurobiological disorders that can severely interfere with a person's ability to acquire competency in one or more of the following areas:

• Oral language (e.g., listening, speaking, understanding)
• Reading (e.g., decoding or phonics, word knowledge, comprehension)
• Written language (e.g., spelling and written expression)
• Mathematics (e.g., computation, problem solving)
• Executive functioning (e.g., planning, decision-making, reasoning, organization, remembering, interpreting)
• Socialization (e.g., interpreting social situations, appropriate social interactions)

The term does not include learning problems that are primarily the result of visual, hearing, or motor disabilities, of mental retardation, of emotional disturbance, or of environmental, cultural, or economic disadvantage.

Specific Learning Disabilities (SLD) result from differences in the way a person’s brain is wired. SLD negatively impact the manner in which an individual interprets what is seen and heard and the ability to connect ideas within the brain. The brain of a child or adult with SLD is structured differently. Many types of Specific Learning Disabilities occur before birth while the brain is forming.

Specific Learning Disabilities can prevent children and adults from processing and using information in a meaningful manner. SLD can severely impact an individual’s ability to learn to read, write, speak, understand spoken language, organize, plan, remember, and/or do basic mathematics.

Specific Learning Disabilities are sometimes called an invisible handicap. The manner in which Specific Learning Disabilities are expressed may vary over an individual’s lifetime, depending on the interaction between the demands of the environment and the individual’s learning abilities and learning weaknesses. SLD often go unnoticed until a child enters school since school requires complex learning activities such as reading and math and more sophisticated forms of information processing. These are the types of activities which are very difficult to learn for many children with SLD.