The Warnock Report (Department of Education and Science, 1978) stresses that there are already in ordinary classes children with special educational needs whose difficulties are not evident as severe physical or sensory handicaps.

They are highly intelligent and, as we already know, technologically advanced despite their physical and sensory handicaps.

As director of the New York Foundling Hospital's Developmental Clinic, a position he held for 33 years, Dr. Di Leo studied thousands of children, conducting tests that appraised their maturity and physical development and helped to spot neuromuscular dysfunctions and sensory handicaps.

This "hidden" disability, currently untreated in about 85 percent of those affected, may be the nation's most damaging sensory handicap.