It’s not a disability if they have something that completely negates the downsides and turns it into an upside.  Just like how Daredevil being blind doesn’t mean he’s disabled, when he has super sonar and is superhumanly perceptive and suffers no ill affects of blindness.  Having two metal limbs you can turn into weapons isn’t a disability, even if once in a while they break.

Congratulations, you just stumbled upon the problem disabled activists have with the term disabled. Disabled people can be competent and capable. Disabled people can be better than their abled peers. This does not negate their disability. For this reason, you may see the term “differently abled.”

Daredevil is still blind. He can’t watch TV or use a computer. He can read something if the ink is raised, but not if it is on a screen or if the item is laminated/really smooth. He is still an amazing lawyer and can kick ass.

The Winter Soldier may be able to do things with his metal arm that is way beyond the ability of any fleshy, organic arm. His metal arm is still an accessibility device. He still uses it to open doors, get dressed, prepare food, etc. Things that don’t require superhuman strength.

Pretty much, I see people referencing things like Iron Man where the disability never presents any actual hindrance to the character, which I assume is kind of the big thing about wanting disability representation: overcoming hindrance.

I see a couple other people raise the same point.

And let’s face it, how would you react to a hero flummoxed by something like, say, trying to put their pants on?

I think what’s getting glossed over here is, going back to the point about hindrance, someone like Edward Elric just acts like a normal-ass person. They may technically be disabled/differently-abled, but “local anime trash boy” doesn’t see Edward Elric as any different or lesser than anybody else, possibly, if we’re going to accuse him of that. 

Now, whether “distinct representation” is any better or worse than “this character has a disability but it doesn’t make them different from anybody else” is a question I’d rather personally leave to the wisdom of the crowds, but I think what some people want from “disabled heroes” does not exactly line up with “guy who has a cyberpunk prosthetic that is perfectly functional like a flesh-and-bone arm.”

In fact, rarely will we get very intimate about the personal routines of characters, like, say, their bathroom habits. Little things that could highlight what life with their hypothetical disability is like.

(For what it’s worth, my current problematic fave is an anime boy who presently has lost the use of an arm and an eye due to neural-interface-overload, but it’s not so bad because he gets them back when he plugs into his giant robot.)