Dictionaries & Acronym Guides

Understanding a rehabilitation report, school assessment, or other disability-related document can be a real challenge if you don’t know the lingo or the acronyms. These resources will help.
Acronyms Frequently Used in Special/Gifted Education
A quick reference from the ERIC Clearinghouse on Disabilities and Gifted Education.
Alphabet Soup
Disability Resources Monthly’s very own guide to disability-related acronyms, with hyperlinks to relevant sections of The DRM WebWatcher.
CancerWeb On-line Medical Dictionary
This extensive medical dictionary includes “terms relating to biochemistry, cell biology, chemistry, medicine, molecular biology, physics, plant biology, radiobiology, science and technology. It includes: acronyms, jargon, theory, conventions, standards, institutions, projects, eponyms, history, in fact anything to do with medicine or science.”
Inclusion & Parent Advocacy – Terminology (Disability Resources)
Explanations of terms relating to inclusion, including procedural terminology; inclusion, full inclusion, mainstreaming and integration; and common techniques and strategies
International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICIDH-2)
The ICIDH-2 classification was developed and revised to provide a unified and standard language and framework for the description of health and health-related states. The revised classification defines components of health and some health-related components of well-being (such as education, labour, etc.). The website includes downloadable, searchable, and foreign language editions.
Multilingual Glossary
This web site features technical and popular medical terms in eight European languages : English, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and Danish. Includes separate word lists, glossaries, multilingual glossary and dictionary.
Pharma-Lexicon [added 5/20/01]
An extensive and easy-to-use guide to pharmaceutical acronyms/abbreviations and find out what they stand for.
Special Education Dictionary
A fairly extensive list of disability terminology with short, readable definitions, from Parentpals.com.
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