Grendel said what I said! 
Look, do I think of you as disabled? Uh, no. But I don't think of my former students with autism as disabled either. In that framing, disabled can suggest someone is less than human, less than perfect, or there's something "wrong" with them. Or as my former boss liked to think, "This (disabled) kid is SO lucky to have me around." 
But when I talked about disability in terms of the law, that's exactly what I did. If you want to change the law, that's your campaign. It ain't mine.
The very fact that a hearing impairment is a "disability" under the law also offers the same kinds of protections that Grendel was talking about. Those protections were in the context of what I said. If you want to change the framing, then you need to address educational settings. You need to point out what I just did - that the dhh population is the only population that has a legal disability (which as educators, we must ADDRESS APPROPRIATELY) and a separate language. There's nothing in there about cognitive deficits. Hearing is defined as a major life task that the average (yes I said average! think of math!) person can perform easily, and HI obviously falls in that category.
I think the current bi - bi movement is looking to address that.
If I thought something was okay, standard, or true just because it was a law, then I'd have a hard time reconciling my liberal weenie views with the country I live in. But I used it in a legal manner that was totally appropriate and you know it.
