It affects everything equipment does. The stuff about not affecting life, armour etc. is to do with if the 'disable' condition is played on a creature/conjuration, as those have all those stats.
Equipment doesn't have those characteristics in the first place, so disable stops it having any effect at all. With the sole exception of Sectarus, which has channeling 1 and would keep that when disabled.
The rules are presumably there for when new cards come out in future sets that allow you to disable creatures/conurations.