jquery to disable buttons on submit/click in forms and links

In my rails app I have buttons that submit information to the server. Some buttons are part of a form and some are not. I'm looking for a way to apply my jquery, which disables the buttons after click, to both.

Here is my current jquery:

  $('.btn-disabler').on('click', function() {
    $(this).append("<i class='fa fa-spinner fa-pulse btn-loader'>").disable(true);
    $(this).find('.btn-label').addClass('invisible');
  });

This code adds an icon disables the button and makes the text invisible. I've extended the disable function to work on anchor tags as explained here http://stackoverflow.com/a/16788240/4584963

An example link:

<a class="btn btn-success btn-disabler" rel="nofollow" data-method="post" href="/approve?id=10">
  <span class="btn-label">Approve</span>
</a>

An example form:

<form class="simple_form well" novalidate="novalidate" id="new_user" action="/" accept-charset="UTF-8" method="post">
      <div class="form-group">
        <input class="string optional form-control" placeholder="First name" type="text" name="user[first_name]" id="user_first_name">
      </div>
      <div class="form-group">
        <input class="string optional form-control" placeholder="Last name" type="text" name="user[last_name]" id="user_last_name">
      </div>
      <div class="form-group">
        <input class="string email optional form-control" placeholder="Email" type="email" name="user[email]" id="user_email">
      </div>
      <div class="form-group">
        <input class="password optional form-control" placeholder="Password" type="password" name="user[password]" id="user_password">
      </div>                
      <div class="form-groups">
        <input class="password optional form-control" placeholder="Retype password" type="password" name="user[password_confirmation]" id="user_password_confirmation">
      </div>
      <button name="button" type="submit" class="btn btn btn-primary btn-disabler">
        <span class="btn-label">Submit</span>
      </button>
</form>

My jquery above does not work for the form. In the form on click, the button changes but there is no submission. To get the jquery to work for the form I need to change it to this:

  $('.signup-form').on('submit', function() {
    $(this).find('.btn-disabler').append("<i class='fa fa-spinner fa-pulse btn-loader'>").disable(true);
    $(this).find('.btn-label').addClass('invisible');
  });

How can I consolidate this to apply to both links and form submit buttons? Seems like my problem stems from links need the click event and the form needs the submit event.