Common but Overlooked Language Disability Highlighted in NIH Report

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Last Updated: April 13, 2026

Tags: Education, Featured Special Project

Six children sit together on a curved bench in a bright library space, each reading or looking at books near large windows.

A new report from the National Institutes of Health is drawing attention to developmental language disorder (DLD), a communication disability that affects millions of children but remains widely underrecognized.

DLD is one of the most common neurodevelopment disorders affecting a child’s speaking, listening, reading, and writing yet many families and educators have never heard of it. Many past labels for DLD—such as specific language impairment, language delay, and developmental dysphasia—have created confusion around its identification, diagnosis and awareness. In 2017, a consensus study done by the international CATALISE project, a collective of experts in this field, decided to refer to the invisible disability as DLD, the clearest term to identify the condition to date. 

DLD affects about 7 to 10 percent of school-age children. That’s about two children per classroom. The disorder doesn’t always look the same. Signs can range from quite mild to profound, according to Dr. Jim Montgomery of Ohio University, which can make identification especially difficult in school settings. Distinguishing DLD from dyslexia and autism is important to bringing more awareness to the condition, the NIH report notes.

“Dyslexia is the problem with written language. DLD is a problem with oral language. Often, once a child gets the dyslexia label, they’re never tested for oral language,” said Dr. Mary Alt, a speech and language expert at The University of Arizona. And the stakes are high. People with DLD are six times more likely to be diagnosed with reading and spelling disabilities by adulthood, and four times more likely to have a math disability.

Currently, schools don’t have systems that assess oral language before the academic impacts are noticed, notes Dr. Suzanne Adlof, a speech-language researcher at the University of South Carolina, whose team is currently developing oral language screening tools for use in kindergarten through third grade.

If ignored, DLD can have a serious impact on how a child interacts with the world socially and emotionally while also impacting school performance. 

DLD represents a condition that intersects education policy, disability rights, and healthcare access and one where earlier identification could meaningfully change outcomes for children who are currently falling through the cracks.

Dr. Alt, of the University of Arizona, is currently leading a team to study the best treatment strategies for 2- to 5-year-olds and trying to understand why current interventions don’t work with some children.

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