Mental retardation is characterized by significant limitations in both intellectual functioning and conceptual, social and practical adaptive skills. This disability originates before age 18. The term ‘intellectual disability’ is synonymous with the term ‘mental retardation,’ and is generally replacing it.

A micro-board is formed when a small group (micro) of committed family and friends join together with a person with disabilities to create a non-profit society (board). Together this small group of people addresses the person's planning and support needs in an empowering and customized fashion. A micro-board comes out of the person centered planning philosophy and is therefore created for the sole support of one individual.

A microenterprise is a business with five or fewer employees, which requires $35,000 or less in start-up capital, and which does not have access to the traditional commercial banking sector.

is a Medicaid demonstration project whose purpose is to eliminate barriers or mechanisms, whether in the State law, the State Medicaid plan, the State budget, or otherwise, that prevent or restrict the flexible use of Medicaid funds to enable Medicaid-eligible individuals to receive support for appropriate and necessary long-term services in the settings of their choice.

A disorder of the central nervous system (brain and spinal cord) involving decreased nerve function because of scars that form on the covering of nerve cells.  Onset usually occurs from age 20 to 40, resulting in difficulties in walking, talking, sensing, seeing, and grasping.

A group of over 40 neuromuscular disorders characterized by progressive weakness and degeneration of the muscles that control movement.  The muscles of the heart and some other involuntary muscles are also affected in some forms of muscular dystrophy, and a few forms involve other organs as well.  While all muscular dystrophy disorders are genetic, they are not always inherited.  Onset of muscular dystrophy can be from birth to middle age, depending on the type of neuromuscular disease.