I'm an experienced recreational diver: certified PADI Advanced Open Water (+Enriched Air and Deep), with 300+ dives in the last 5 years, including boat dives and shore dives, drift dives, wall dives, wreck dives, and cleanup dives, and I have excellent buoyancy control and air consumption. I'm also an open water long-distance swimmer and am more comfortable in the ocean than on land.
I also have chronic nerve pain (CRPS) and limited mobility on my lower left side. I don't walk much, and I do not use foot fins when diving; I typically dive with small handfins (webbed gloves) instead.
I do not need any special assistance underwater. I do, however, need some assistance on land/boat, including boarding the boat (especially if there's a large gap or height distance) and entering/exiting the water. More specifically, once I have a tank on my back, I need help getting up from seated and walking on the boat to the exit point. I also take off my gear in the water before getting back on the boat, which I've found is not at all unusual. I can do both backroll and stride entry, and can climb up ladders (slightly slower than other divers because I only lead with one foot).
While this doesn't present any problems with with the dive operators I use regularly, I've had a range of experiences when traveling and dealing with new dive operators: from positive experiences where I am treated more or less like any other diver, to dive operators needing signficant convincing to let me dive (though this mostly happened when I had fewer dives under my belt), to the rare but memorable poor experience of being immediately towed underwater without consent or even prior discussion. It's not clear to me that disclosing ahead of time has led to any better outcome than waiting until the day of the dive to casually mention that "oh, by the way, I don't use foot fins". Bringing it up runs the risk of making it into a much bigger deal that it actually is.
That said, if you want the nitty-gritty details and what I've found works best for diving with me, read on, but the tl;dr is that once I'm in the water, I'm really no different than other divers.
Don't:
Do:
Thanks!
Pondering #1: Why is it so surprising that people can dive without foot fins, when fish don't scissor kick or frog kick, and while tail fins can be incredibly useful, there are also many species of fish that don't even particularly rely on their tail fins for propulsion? Watch parrotfish or butterflyfish or boxfish swim, and you'll notice they are using their pectoral fins a lot. And then there are manta rays and sailfish and even flying fish with their own fast and efficient ways to swim. Somewhat closer to the human body in form, sea turtles swim almost entirely with their front flippers (seriously nerdy analysis here). Marine mammals do use their tail fins, but usually together as a single fin along with the rest of their body to undulate, similar to the aptly-named dolphin kick used by competitive (human) swimmers.
Pondering #2: Isn't it ironic to call someone a "disabled diver" when underwater may be one of the environments that is least disabling? Why is not using foot fins called adaptive diving? Aren't foot fins an adaptation (or even, dare I say, a mobility aid) to help people move around underwater, just as crutches or a wheelchair are adaptations or aids that help some people move around on land? (And actually, foot fins can be a disadvantage in some environments, such as wrecks, because it's easier to avoid kicking up silt and to turn around in tight spaces without foot fins.) And speaking of different ways of moving in the water and on land, why don't more people realize that mermaids can benefit from using wheelchairs on land?