I need to belabor the point that there is no single acceptable definition for “disability” before I go off about my own. Please do not forget that fact.
My brain likes functional definitions that are broad enough to be applicable in multiple cultures. So, when I say disability, I initially mean any aspect of a person’s functioning that makes meeting their own needs difficult without assistance. Whether this is due to a person’s struggle to function or due to their society’s failure to value their needs is a very important, but separate, question.
My own perspective has resulted in my experiencing disability as the state of requiring more care to survive and thrive than is considered normal in one’s culture. [At this point it is worth pointing to my definition of care, for reference.] My experience of disability is, of course, deeply rooted in the cultures that I have lived in. I feel most disabled when I contemplate how much I can expect my world to care for me; and the ways I need care are absolutely specific to my time and place.
Nonetheless, the state of needing care is universal for humans, as much as the tendency to want a defined limit to how much care a person can expect from others. Disability is, ultimately, the experience of being trapped astride the line between needing enough and needing too much, wherever one’s culture draws it.
If that wasn’t awkward enough, another consequence of defining disability in this way is the realization that it is almost certainly impossible for a single human being to make it through life without spending some time being “disabled”.