When Everyone Is Disabled, Rethinking the Checkbox
I was applying for a job today, moving through the usual parade of fields — name, email, portfolio link, the ritualistic “Why do you want to work here?” — when I saw this question list and the laundry list below, I realized my eyebrows were wrinkled with annoyance.
“Do you have, or have you EVER had, any of the following disabilities?”
Below it was a list so long, so sweeping, so strangely intimate that I had to scroll twice to reach the end. And as I read it, something clicked: this wasn’t a list of exceptions. This was a list of humanity.
Here’s a sample of what counted as a “disability”:
Alcohol or substance use disorder
Autoimmune disorders
Cancer (past or present)
Diabetes
Depression, anxiety, PTSD
ADHD, autism, dyslexia
Migraines
Asthma
IBS
Celiac
Epilepsy
Heart disease
Traumatic brain injury
Fibromyalgia
Missing limbs
Paralysis
HIV/AIDS
Crohn’s
Cerebral palsy
Blindness or low vision
Deafness or serious hearing difficulty
Short stature
Mobility impairments
And on, and on, and on.
Reading it felt less like filling out a form and more like flipping through a medical encyclopedia of the human experience. And the kicker wasn’t just Do you have one? — it was Have you EVER had one?
Ever?!
As in: Did you struggle with depression in college? Did you have cancer ten years ago? Did you break your leg in a way that left lasting mobility issues? Did you have a traumatic brain injury from a car accident? Do you get migraines? Did you have asthma as a kid? Did you ever have an eating disorder? Did you ever have a substance problem? Did you ever have a learning disability diagnosis? Did you ever have anxiety severe enough to be treated?
If we’re honest, doesn’t almost everyone in America have to answer yes?
And that’s what struck me: the form assumes “normal” is the baseline, but normal is the myth. The list wasn’t describing a fringe group — it was describing the human body and mind across a lifetime.
We all break. We all heal. We all carry something.
The question wasn’t offensive. It wasn’t even ill‑intentioned. It was part of a legal compliance process meant to protect people. But it revealed something deeper, our systems still operate as if disability is an exception, when in reality it’s the rule.
Most of us will experience at least one of these conditions. Many of us will experience several. Some will be temporary. Some will be chronic. Some will be invisible. Some will reshape our lives.
But the idea that there is a clean dividing line between “disabled” and “not disabled” collapses under the weight of that list.
It made me wonder:
What would change if we stopped treating disability as deviation and started treating it as spectrum? What if we acknowledged that bodies and minds are dynamic, not static? What if the question wasn’t “Do you have one?” but “How does your body move through the world today?”
Because the truth is simple: The list doesn’t reveal who is disabled. It reveals that disability is woven into the fabric of being alive.
Maybe the real disability is pretending we’re untouched.
