No I just regards DS as "wired differently". I don't see him as disabled. It breaks my heart that without the right help he will remain completely maladapted to the modern Western world though.
He is disabled when dealing with paperwork for "The Man", but not in and of himself. Tony Attwood said the same thing in his book about Aspbergers. In a different historical period/environmental setting he would be at a considerable daily adaptive advantage to some of his peers who are thriving in a mainstream 2013 setting.
Reading/writing wasn't half as important as the ability to forage for wild foods for serfs during the medieval age. His affinity with animals means he might have made a fantastic hunter/trapper/ horse trainer in the right era.
Schools in their current format have only been around for a century or two. He'd have done just fine in the one room village school house his Granny attended where everyone had to work in silence at their own desk, rules & social hierarchy were very clear, the walls were not covered in visual distractions etc, etc.
A rural dweller of the 17th century would have been horrified with life in a modern big city, and not many of us could cope if we were transported back to then either. he wouldn't have had to contend with such complicated clothing etc every morning either.
DS isn't disabled when he's in his room with noone bothering him, add other people into the mix and it all goes wrong lol!
If you consider that 1% of the population is schizophrenic, 1-5% has add/adhd, 1% suffers from bi-polar, 1-5% is dyspraxic, up to 5% dyslexic, 1% are of genius level intellect, 1% are true pyschopaths, etc, etc then you start to wonder who is left that can be considered "normal"!
Especially when you then take into account all the secondary mood disorders that will at some point affect 25% of the population over the course of their lifetime, the huge range of physical disabilities from arthritis to cerebal palsy and the fact that being old is, in and of itself a disability when compared to the general population.
Using the ASD spectrum as one example of variance from the norm - how many of these children could endure life on a lonely mountainside as a shepherd while other more gregarious NT types could not? How many would be happy being left to solve a technical problem such inventing a new tool for a specific task if left for the days they would need to ponder the problem through properly?
Those hyper-senses would enable my non-sleeping DS to identify the approach of a predator, and his response time would mean he would be up, gone and hiding 3 miles away on the other side of the mountain while his "NT" peers were providing a lovely lunch for that sabre toothed tiger, wolf pack or bear.
. Now too many people are being considered surplus to requirements yet I doubt mankind could have conquered as many physical environments through the ages if he confirmed to as rigid a model of physicality and mental development as is expected in today's society.
In the third world lifetime outcomes are often better despite the lack of therapy because the communities around our children focus on what they CAN do, rather than what they can't in order to equip them for being able to be to contributors to their families as adults.
I'm not denying my son is different or that he has problems. I just see disability increasingly as being more about social constructs than individual capabilities. In previous times, before the big city industrial welfare model every person in a village had some part to play in the productivity of the whole community, even the most humble and fragile.
I dream of an education system that learns to embrace and include neuro differences as it has learned to accept racial differences. DS fits the 1.5% category of children that cannot be educated in the current UK mainstream set up, without considerable additional resources. Yet I see our children as the canaries in the coal mine of a failing system. Humans are not widgets and schools should not be sausage factories.
We have the knowledge to help them (ABA, evidence practice, good OT & physio, visual tracking training braille etc) yet so many children are not given access to so many methods, therapies and pedagogies that would enable them to learn that it's a scandal.
I am fairly willing to bet that if most of the parents were given FULL & FREE control of their child's state education and therapy budget that they could achieve a threefold improvement in outcomes, while spending a quarter of the current funds. There is a very strong vested industry interest in our children remaining disabled for life. (Social care for adults is now big business, but don't be fooled, noone said our children should be the beneficieries of those funds either!)