Plain answers
What counts as a disability?
People often assume our services are not for them. More often than not, they are.
The legal definition
“Any physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities.”
That is the definition used by the Americans with Disabilities Act. It is deliberately broad, and it is much broader than most people assume.
Major life activities include things like walking, seeing, hearing, speaking, breathing, learning, concentrating, reading, communicating, and working. An impairment does not have to be permanent, and it does not have to be severe, to substantially limit one of them.
Not always visible
You cannot tell by looking.
Plenty of disabilities are not apparent to anyone else. Chronic illness and chronic pain, mental health conditions, learning disabilities, hearing and vision loss, brain injury, seizure disorders, and long-term effects of illness or treatment are all disabilities — whether or not anyone else can see them.
People with hidden disabilities often go longest without support, precisely because nobody suggests it to them.
What we actually do about it
Most of the time, the barrier is not the person.
A step is a barrier. A bus route is a barrier. A form nobody can read is a barrier. Change those and a great deal changes with them — which is why our work tends to be practical rather than clinical.
Communication
Finding techniques and tools that let you be understood, and understand others, in the situations that matter to you.
Getting around
Working out transport that actually functions for your circumstances, so that where you can go is not decided by what happens to run nearby.
Equipment and technology
Adaptive technology and equipment — communication devices, hearing aids, computers, wheelchairs, and the rest — matched to what you are trying to do.
Not sure whether this describes you?
Then ask. It costs nothing, it commits you to nothing, and it is a much shorter conversation than you might expect.