That one episode where her empathic abilities stopped working prove your point. She was useless at her job without them. She could likely have adapted, sure, but over the course of years and with therapy designed to help her adjust. She was literally disabled and all the humans were like, “What’s the problem? We live like this all the time.”
Imagine if your sense of equilibrium just vanished one day and you were a professional athlete. That’s a career ending disability right there. I feel like that episode would be written very differently if it was made now.