American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities
American non-profit organization
The American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (AAIDD) is an American non-profit organization focusing on intellectual disability and related developmental disabilities. AAIDD has members in the United States and more than 50 other countries.
History
The AAIDD was founded in 1876 by Édouard Séguin, and is the oldest professional association concerned with intellectual and developmental disabilities. It is headquartered in Silver Spring, Maryland, a suburb of Washington, D.C.
The name of the association has changed five times in its history, reflecting the changes in thinking about the condition known today as intellectual disability:
1876: Association of Medical Officers of American Institutions for Idiotic and Feebleminded Persons
1906: American Association for the Study of the Feebleminded
1933: American Association on Mental Deficiency
1987: American Association on Mental Retardation
2007: American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities
Mission and Goals
The AAIDD's stated mission is to promote progressive policies, sound research, effective practices, and universal human rights for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
The association's goals are to:
Enhance the capacity of professionals who work with individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
Promote the development of a society that fully includes individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
Sustain an effective, responsive, well managed, and responsibly-governed organization.
It also has various sub-groups with more specific interests, such as the Religion and Spirituality Interest Network, "an interfaith, interdisciplinary association of professional ordained and lay people who journey with persons with developmental disabilities and their families."
Understanding Intellectual Disability
The organization's most well-known publication is its definitional and diagnostic manual, first published in 1910 and now in its 12th edition: Intellectual Disability: Definition, Diagnosis, Classification, and Systems of Support.
Researchers and clinicians affiliated with AAIDD provided input to the development of the World Health Organization's (WHO) International Classification of Diseases, 11th Revision (ICD-11) behavioral indicators that could be used to guide clinical judgement in determining the presence and severity of deficits in intellectual functioning and adaptive behavior for the purpose of making a diagnosis of disorders of intellectual development when standardized assessments are not available or feasible. When field tested by the WHO, the behavioral indicators were found to have good clinical utility and excellent inter-rater reliability.
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Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 12, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3541546. VIAF identifies the subject as 149992770. The Library of Congress control number is n2006185798. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1876, 1906, 1933 and 1987.
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