Is epilepsy a disability?

A recent flyer to provide some small financial assistance for the local Junior College to those with disabilities listed “seizures” as one of the disabilities that qualified. I’ve been diagnosed with epilepsy for the past 17 years, suffering from both grand mal and partial complex seizures. I never thought of myself as “disabled” as such. Is it a disability?

I used to work as a software engineer, and was having 1-2 partial siezure a week, and when I got laid off, I found that they went away completely. My grand mal seizures are controlled by dilantin completly, as long as I take it methodically. If I perform manual labor for more than a few hours, I get uncontrollable shakes, that my neurologist says are “normal”. I don’t know if different states have different defintions of “disabled”, but I do live in California. Is there a different definition for state, federal, and just plain medical?

As you said, there are several definitions. Most of them depend on the question, “Can you work?” In some cases, a tighter definition decides things like eligibilty for driver’s licenses and permits to carry firearms. If you are vision-impaired, or if you have epilepsy that’s not under control, you may be able to work, but you can’t get a driver’s license. If a person is seriously deranged, he may be able to hold a job, but he can’t get a gun permit.

If you want to know about how the local JC handles it, ask them. If your partial complex siezures were the reason for your layoff, that could shift the balance. The standards are all over the chart, so you’ll just have to find out for yourself.

Depends on what you mean by disabled. Culturally? Legally? Legally disabled is kind of a strange definition as the legal definition of disabilty essentially means that you can’t work at all.
I would say that some forms of epilespy would fall under the aegis of the services an office of disabilty services would provide. Some forms of epilespy cause learning disabilites, nereological deficts (ala ADD or Asperger’s Syndrome)

I don’t know about other contexts, but in the Veteran’s Administration, there exists a notion of partial disability. A vet might, for instance, be considered to be 40% disabled as a result of events during his service; in this case, the VA would pay that person 40% of what they would pay to a completely disabled vet. Or at least, so says my Vietnam-vet father.

Yes. As others have indicated, it depends on what the definition’s purpose is:

http://www.usdoj.gov/crt/ada/q%26aeng02.htm

http://www.ssa.gov/dibplan/dqualify4.htm

Most states use standards similar or identical to the federal ones, but there are variations. For instance, the California Supreme Court held that for the purposes of disability discrimination, a person is disabled if they have *some *limitation on major life activities, instead of a *substantial *limitation.

Here’s a handy list of some of the laws applicable to disabled individuals in California.

Here is some information on epilepsy as a disability:

http://www.ssa.gov/OP_Home/rulings/di/01/SSR87-06-di-01.html

http://www.epilepsynse.org.uk/pages/info/leaflets/work.cfm

http://www.seniormag.com/legal/epilepsy.htm

http://www.hhs.gov/ocr/ada.html

Fascinating! According to them I’m paraplegic but not disabled (not that it matters, given my location).