The World Health Organization's International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) is a framework for describing and classifying an individual's health and health-related states. The purpose of this article is to discuss the relevance of the ICF to cognitive-communication disorders of dementia, in particular those of Alzheimer disease. These disorders are described according to the Functioning and Disability, and the Contextual Factors parts of the ICF, with a focus on assessment, coding and classification, intervention, and outcome measurement.