Many believe that the ultimate wisdom can be gleaned from quotes from either “The Simpsons” or “Seinfeld.”
I tend to reach for either George Carlin or Shakespeare 
On this subject … Shakespeare reminds us that a bit of humility can be a formidable tool in fighting ignorance:
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
I’m not sure I understand the second sentence, but WRT the first, if I ask someone to run an errand for me, there are any number of mental/emotional conditions - social anxiety, agoraphobia, depression… - which might impair an individual’s ability to comply.
I’ve mentioned this before, but I think a big portion of my difficulty is with the very word disability. Many folk view it as the equivalent of incapacitation - a rather profound inability to perform at least some basic life activities. Whereas others use it to describe what I consider an “impairment” or a “limitation.” In fact, the latter definition is consistent with the ADA. Other laws/institutions - such as the VA, SSA, most private disability insurance - have VASTLY different definitions of the same term.
The extent to which an underlying medical condition affects one’s ability to function is largely affected by that person’s personality and other aspects. We’ve all encountered similarly situated individuals - say amputees. One will go to great lengths to maintain their independence, while the other seemingly goes to similar lengths to get out of doing things and to have other people do things for them.
And some of the reaction is beyond our conscious control. I personally have a ridiculously high pain threshold. Which is not entirely to my favor, as I have failed to distinguish between transient pain and significant injury, thereby exacerbating injuries. Other people respond to what I would consider minor injuries in a manner I consider extreme. I know that not all such people are attention-seeking drama queens.
On the flip side, the workers comp industry also puts aside money in a “second injury fund” to pay extra to people who lose the same part a second time. That is, the payment for losing your second hand is much more than the payment for losing your first hand, because you lose so much more ability with the loss of the second hand. Same for the second eye, or second leg, or second thumb.
I guess i haven’t had it come up at work. I honestly can’t think of a single instance in my life where someone just said, “I’m disabled” and it wasn’t obvious what they meant. For instance, in the thread that sparked this, i assume the person who said “in disabled” had some condition that makes it much harder for them to get up and cross the room and turn out the lights than it is for me. And i didn’t think very hard beyond that, because… Sure, there are lots of conditions that would do that. My reaction was more, “isn’t it nice that we live in the future and they can buy a cheap consumer device that helps them with that.”
This post really rubbed me the wrong way.
I recently browsed Facebook, and ran across a post from a woman I used to dance with. I was aware that she’s been suffering from pain for a while. In her most recent post, she asked for advice on handling anger. She is angry at all the doctors she’s seen in the last 15 years who told her to keep doing stuff despite the pain, and didn’t think to suggest she try a wheelchair. (Walking and standing aggravate her pain.) They offered her drugs. But not practical advice on how to live without walking and standing much.
She has finally accepted that she’s disabled and is using a wheelchair and had been pain-free for the first time in more than a decade. And she’s FURIOUS that so many people discouraged her from trying this sooner.
“Absence of horrible pain” isn’t “being pampered”. And being disabled tends to reduce your income, and thus the amount of pampering the world gives you.
I agree with this 100%. This is why I hate glurge or inspiration “porn” such as The Chicken Soup for the Soul books. People buy them and read these stories about disabled people manage to “overcome” their disabilities. It can lead them to expect the disabled people in their lives to be able do so to. But often that is not possible so it just puts a high burden of pressure and stress onto disabled people.
I sometimes refer to myself as “semi-disabled,” since for the last six years I’ve been unable to be on my feet for more than a few minutes at a time. When I go food shopping I use the shopping cart as a walker. The problem is if I can’t find a parking spot near the store entrance.
When the problem first began, I asked a doctor whether he could approve a handicapped parking placard. He replied, “Oh, I don’t believe in those.” I got up and left and never saw him again.
I’m certainly not in the habit of pampering myself, nor trying to “overcome” my problem. I was once in a circumstance in which I had to remain standing for a longer period of time than I was able to. I literally collapsed and passed out.
You ought to see another doctor, because from what I’ve seen, there is no shortage of doctors who will sign off on placards. Presuming you have a diagnosed condition and are undergoing some treatment for it.
Not that you should care, but if you told me you had difficulty w/ prolonged standing/walking, I think in most situations I would more readily try to assist/accommodate you than if you described yourself as “semi-disabled.”
That’s exactly what I did.
That sorta makes sense. But I could also see someone making the argument that they spent a lot of time in PT/OT and had learned to compensate for the missing digit so this was effectively like losing the entire hand. Of course, the state likely paid for all that therapy so there’s that.
(I had to rewrite that more than once just to avoid using “on the one hand”/“OTOH”.
I’ve had knee problems on and off for most of my adult life, and as I’ve gotten older it’s gotten worse. When I started having anemia issues a few years ago it became more difficult to walk any distance. Since I don’t drive and am dependent on public transportation to get around, I asked my doctor about getting qualified for the local EZRider program, which provides door-to-door transportation for doctor appointments, grocery shopping, etc. He agreed, and filled out the medical paperwork. He also saw that I got a placard to use if someone was giving me a ride, but suggested that I only use it if I was having a “bad day” since I really needed the exercise of walking across a parking lot if I felt up to it.
I think it means “In some respects, I am not capable of normal tasks that other people find routine.”
Nothing more, nothing less. I am confused about the OP’s use of “deference”. It’s not a statement about perception, it’s just a way of saying “Some regular things are hard for me.”
Depression is such a complex illness that there are many competing theories about the cause - but we have a good deal of research into what’s happening in the mind of a depressed person. It’s not “big feelings” so much as a complete dysfunction of many indicated parts of the brain. It can be every bit as disabling as a so-called “physical” disability (depression is a physical condition, of course. It’s just that the dysfunctional part of the body – our brain – is not visible.)
See: Where in the Brain is Depression? for just a glimpse of how biologically complicated depression is.
The issue with depression is that it can be mildly upsetting or completely debilitating. On one side you’ve got people who are a little down, and on the other side you’ve got people who are catatonic or literally cannot move their bodies (Read The Noonday Demon for an account how bad severe depression can be. His parents had to literally peel him off of the floor to get him to the hospital.) At its worst, treatment-resistant depression can require extreme intervention such as Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation or Electroconvulsive Therapy. (I’ve done TMS - it requires treatment 5x a week for three months - and it ultimately failed to help me. Whoops, there goes $10,000!) Surely it would have been easier for me to “make choices that aren’t aligned with my feelings” than to shoot electromagnetic pulses into my prefrontal cortex.
Then there’s acute suicidality. I’m not talking about “I wish I was dead,” (which is pretty common) I’m talking about, “Should I jump off the Ambassador bridge or try to obtain a firearm as quickly as possible? Should I do it in some remote parking lot where my husband won’t find my corpse?” All you can think about is the shortest route to death, with some intrusive thoughts of the horror you’re inflicting on your family to keep things lively. It is impossible to function in that state. There’s a reason people are hospitalized when they are in that state.
There’s a reason mental health conditions are included in the Americans With Disabilities Act.
And here’s the thing - it can cover a wide range within a single individual. Someone may be able to function 80% of the time but 20% of the time they cannot get out of bed. Which is why I’d like to see an end to this all-or-nothing thinking. It’s possible to be sometimes-but-not-usually disabled. It’s possible to be capable of part-time work but not full-time work. The government paradigm that people either work full time or they are 100% disabled actually prevents a lot of people from participating in society. And it may well influence how people think of themselves.
I’m the one who posted that I was disabled; I posted it in a very light-hearted way (I said “so nyer!”), and also said that the devices aren’t all about saving labour anyway.
That would probably indicate that I wouldn’t be offended by you asking for specifics, and I’m not offended. I am a little surprised, though. Almost all
“labour-saving” devices also help people who have physical or mobility problems - I mean, labour is physical labour, and some people have problems with some aspects of physical labour. Seems to me it’s obvious that labour-saving devices can be useful for people who have disabilities.
FWIW, the light switch is because I have difficulty lifting my arms due to problems with my shoulders. For most of the switches I just get on with it, but one of them is particularly awkward to reach. Going to another room to speak to someone, or especially going down the stairs to do that, is obviously more difficult if you have difficulties walking, like I often do - rheumatoid arthritis (plus a couple of other things), so it varies a hell of a lot.
And just not having to use my hands is sometimes, er, handy. Obviously I’m using my hands to type now, and I do that all day, but they get tired, so having a hands-free option gives my hands a break. And if I have to use my hands to help get around because of my legs not working properly that day, then my hands aren’t usable for things like light switches at all.
An acquaintance of mine installed Alexa for his mother to enable her to continue living independently for a while. It was all little things, but it helped. They’re often used as assistive devices for people with a wide range of disabilties.
Anyway, for the general question, in a social situation I wouldn’t be offended if someone asked what my disability was, but also would generally not want to answer, at least in detail. For them, they’re just curious (especially because I’m young and look healthy), whereas for me, it’s an unpleasant topic and also extremely boring compared to everything else, and I’d rather talk about other stuff when I’m out being sociable. So I’d tell them briefly, then change the subject. And if they started saying shit like “oh yeah, my friend had that in her little finger and drank aloe vera and it all went away” then I’d probably change the person I’m talking to, not just the subject.
Online it’s fine as long as me giving a very brief answer or none at all is met with acceptance rather than a demand for more details. Also I can answer in my own time, like I have now.
It would also get annoying, not offensive, but annoying, if someone asked for further details, especially if they contained really obvious “advice.”
At work I would expect it only to come up in specific circumstances if it’s from a superior. Sometimes it’s relevant.
From colleagues, well, it varies. There was one time I was in a staffroom and I said that I had rheumatoid arthritis (in context of something else) and there was an audible intake and exhalation of breath from everyone there - they’d obviously all been wondering but hadn’t wanted to ask.
It is a weird one because it can sometimes really mean that, unlike in the movies, you limp on one leg one day and the other leg the next day. 
Sorry for using “I” rather than generalising, but it’s difficult to generalise. Every person with a disability will feel differently so I don’t want to try to speak for everyone. I think my POV is fairly common, but it’s certainly not universal.
FWIW I’m officially disabled in the sense that I get PIP - a UK benefit that’s for people with extra needs, nothing to do with being able to go to work or not (and really hard to get)- and have a blue badge for when I’m driven somewhere. But in some contexts I wouldn’t expect “disabled” to be that strictly applied.
Also there was no “deference” expected. That’s an odd word to use - I’m not sure what you mean by it at all. It doesn’t sound like you mean anything negative, which is one of the reasons I’m baffled.
Re asking people about their disabilities. I had a deaf friend who wore bright purple hearing aids. And he told me that he did that on purpose to encourage people to ask about it, because he was a bit of an evangelical about disabilities in general and deafness in particular.
I still didn’t ask him until he opened the topic. 
For the record, here is the context in which I said “I’m disabled.”
Dinsdale said that he was sceptical of Alexa etc because those sort of labour-saving devices made him think of the far lazy people in Wall-E. He then clarified what he meant by listing the things I had said I find Alexa useful for.
I responded with "Heh. I’m disabled, so for me those things are more than mere convenience. So nyer to you!
But a lot of it isn’t about being labour-saving, anyway. The convenience factors are different. [rest of post, nothing to do with disability]."
Not exactly a serious post, right? A jokey response to a comment about Wall-E characters.
In that context, to me, it would be weird to specify the particular type of physical disability that meant labour-saving devices are more than just convenient. I mean, that’d be over-sharing, really. There’s actually more than one condition involved for me, but I can’t be arsed sharing my whole medical history. Also it’s not like only people with one specific disability find voice-assisted devices useful.
Sometimes vague terms are useful. And sometimes they’re not being used with deep earnestness.
Fair enough. I didn’t see the original thread, and just responded to this thread with my own thoughts and experiences.
I still think it’s interesting that when people hear “I’m disabled” we don’t think of situations like yours or JaneDoe42’s or MandaJo’s husband’s or puzzlegal’s dance friend’s. Our minds do go to the people in Wall-E, because, sadly, such people exist.
Not sure why this should bother me - I don’t have to be them, after all. I do think it’s a waste of a life, and I wonder how the Wall-E types are going to look back when they get to Erickson’s “integrity vs despair” stage of life, once it’s too late to change things.
Really? You think that people in general hear the words “I’m disabled” and assume a piss-taker? That’s a very sad take on the world.
It’s not like you or anyone else thinks disabilities don’t exist, surely.
I don’t like the “identifying as disabled” thing either, where people make it part of their self, rather than part of the way they operate within the world. But that doesn’t mean the word is useless.
20-30 years ago I would have assumed something different. I do believe the usage of the word has changed over time, in a way that may not serve anyone well.
Of course I believe disabilities exist. Still, I think we’re moving in a direction where every maladaptive trait or behavior is becoming a “disability”. That’s… not great. Think of the example in doreen’s post, where her sister’s unnamed “disability” kept her from even RSVP-ing to her niece’s wedding. Come on. If this trend comes to prevent us from expecting adult behavior from adults, that does not bode well for society.
As for people who make a disability part of their self, yeah, I’ve seen it. A disability can become a way not to operate in the world.
Oh, I just realized I typed a whole response when the thread had just started. It’s probably been totally hijacked by now, but I might as well post it.
I would define “disabled” as “being unable to perform, or able to perform only with significant difficulty, some basic life task which most people routinely perform without any difficulty”.
In the thread you mentioned, I would assume it was some disability which made it more than trivially difficult for her to cross the room, which could be any number of things; chronic back pain, plantar fasciitis, morbid obesity, etc.
Other than people who are somehow involved with adjudicating disability benefits claims, I would think the only time someone would be likely to hear that is in the context of someone either (as in this case) explaining why they can’t (or find it difficult to) do some particular thing or explaining their source of income. In either case, I would be very cautious about taking that statement as an invitation to ask for further details.
I know people that make their grade-school kid’s soccer “career” a way to not operate in the world. Or the existence of a kid at all. Or an obsession with a fandom. But that doesn’t mean I assume anyone who mentions their kid plays soccer has deep character flaws that they are trying to justify.
I will say this: anyone can become disabled, or have someone they love become disabled. If you’ve poisoned your own mind that such a thing is shameful, it’s going to be a struggle.