This paper discusses the challenges of identifying gifted students from underrepresented or special populations. Reasons for underrepresentation of students from special populations are reviewed and include biases in standardized testing, underreferral of students from diverse cultural and ethnic groups to gifted programs by teachers, and the traditional focus on students' deficiencies rather than on students' strengths. Problems inherent in the identification of gifted students with specific physical disabilities and students with learning disabilities are also addressed, and include language impairments that create barriers to verbal testing, stereotypical expectations about gifted children, delays in specific developmental disabilities that are often used as indicators of giftedness, incomplete information about the child which limits the view of the child's potential, and lack of opportunity to display talents. Educators are urged to address three areas that relate to recognizing talent in students with physical and learning disabilities, including the difficulty in expressing and recognizing talent, the effect of the classroom atmosphere, and integration into the regular classroom. (Contains 28 references.) (CR)