I didn’t realize it, but when I first began to wonder about whether I was disabled, I fell into an ableist trap: wasn’t “disabled” a special category for those who are really really disabled?

Think about it: disability is a huge range of human experience. If you set it aside and assume you’re not disabled “enough,” you’re in effect assuming that the “real” disabled people those whose experience is “way bad.”

And “way bad” is the essence of an ableist view of disability. Disability is seen as unrelatable, extreme, impossible. That whole framing is wrong.

It’s not a contest. “Disabled” means the world is not adapted or accessible for my body/mind. That’s all.