Wheelchair? Hearing Aids? Yes. ‘Disabled’? No Way.

The survey looked at nearly 3,000 Americans aged 50 and older and found that only a minority — fewer than 18 percent of participants over 65 — saw themselves as having a disability.

Yet their responses to the six questions that the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey uses to track disability rates told a different story.

The A.C.S. asks whether respondents have difficulty seeing or hearing, limitations in walking or climbing stairs, difficulty concentrating or remembering, trouble dressing or bathing, difficulty working, or problems leaving the home.

In the university’s survey, about a third of those aged 65 to 74 reported difficulty with one or more of those functions. Among those over 75, the figure was more than 44 percent.

Moreover, when asked about several additional health conditions that would require accommodations under the Americans with Disabilities Act, including respiratory problems or speech disorders, the proportion climbed even higher. Half the 65-to-74 group reported disabilities, as did about two-thirds of those over 75.

Yet only a sliver — fewer than one in five — of older adults had ever received an accommodation from their health care providers to which they are legally entitled under the A.D.A.

Even among the small minority who identified as disabled, only a quarter had asked for an accommodation (though a third received one, whether they asked or not).

“It’s a familiar story,” said Megan Morris, a rehabilitation researcher at N.Y.U. Langone Health and director of the Disability Equity Collaborative. When it comes to the way people describe themselves, “many people still feel like ‘disability’ is a dirty word,” she said.

It’s almost an American value to decline to seek help, even when the law requires that it be available, added Dr. Meade. Faced with a disability, she said, “we’re supposed to toughen up and battle through it.”

That may be particularly true among older Americans whose attitudes formed before the landmark A.D.A. became law in 1990, or even before the 50-year-old Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, which guaranteed access to public education.

“It’s going to be hard for that older generation,” Dr. Morris said. “Disability was something that was locked away. Younger folks are more open to seeing disability as being part of a community.”

In the University of Michigan survey, for instance, among people over 65 who had two or more disabilities, about half identified as a person with a disability. In the younger cohort, aged 50 to 64, it was 68 percent.

Why does that matter? “It greatly assists in health care settings if you disclose a disability and know to request an accommodation and support,” said Anjali Forber-Pratt, the research director at the American Association of Health and Disability.

Such accommodations “can make a stressful situation easier,” she added. They include mammography and X-ray machines that allow patients to remain seated, scales that wheelchair users can roll onto, examination tables that rise and lower so that patients don’t have to step onto a footstool and swivel around.

Health care providers may also offer amplification devices for people with hearing loss, as well as magnifiers and large print materials for the visually impaired. Buildings themselves must be accessible. Practices can send a staff member with a wheelchair to help patients traverse long distances.

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