AI Tags Are the New Service Dog Vests and Disabled Writers Are Paying the Price.
I am a disabled writer. And I am so sick of this “AI is bad” in creative spaces, fear mongering gatekeeping that is going on. This technology, for better or for worse is here. It is never going away and it has some genuinely fascinating uses that will make society better for it.
As a retired nurse the advancements in medicine it is providing and the lives it is saving is mind boggling. We all know that early detection of deadly diseases saves lives and improves quality of life. And AI is able to detect patterns in healthcare so much earlier than human doctors can.
The broad access to knowledge that allows people who otherwise have no access to a higher education, can self teach any skill with a digital tutor that is available 24/7. And I could sit here all night and list the problems that AI has the potential to solve in our lives.
However, I want to share my response to a writers forum post on Royal Road because if it gets even one person to stop and question their bias and makes a disabled writer feel seen it has served its purpose.
OP had asked about the use of AI in writing and the comments were overwhelmingly negative and hostile to the idea of a writer even using AI to begin with. They had no idea why the OP was asking. Whether or not he was trying to decide for himself if AI would be a legitimate accessibility tool that would enable him to write for the first time.
I remember reaching out to forums and asking about AI as a writing aid and getting that overwhelming feedback. I walked away from those conversations with a shame in myself for even considering using AI in my writing. Despite the fact that I could see how it would unlock the translation of imaginative thought to written word that a TBI had stolen from me.
I felt ashamed that I needed an accessibility tool, any accessibility tool to write at all. I was told that if you can’t write without assistance then you are not an author and have no business telling stories. Yes that was an actual response that one person gave me and that dozens of people liked.
But, I am the type of personality that you don’t tell me I can’t do something. That is the fastest way to actually make me do it. I am that person that will annoyingly buckle down and solve a problem just to prove the naysayer wrong.
After 3 decades as a nurse advocating on the behalf of my patients and 2 decades as an abuse mentor advocating for the rights of victims, I am not afraid to stand up and advocate for the rights of the disabled. To champion the right to utilize a life changing accessibility tool. Especially one that opens opportunities for creative expression that would not be there otherwise. And I don’t care how controversial that stance is.
What Got Me So Fired Up Today?
The question that created a firestorm of negativity in a writers forum that got me so fired up was this: “Where is the line drawn on the acceptance of AI in writing.”
To me this does not say bad actor attempting to steal someone else’s writing. Neither does it scream I am asking permission to pass AI writing off as my own. To me this sounds like a person navigating the use of AI as a potential accessibility tool. Trying to learn the rules of AI use in the space that they are intending to use it.
Unfortunately, AI is new and rules around its use in creative spaces need to be established. But we should be constructively debating how to integrate this new technology into our spaces in an ethical, non-discriminatory way. Not shaming people for seeing the possibility in emerging technology.
I chose to educate instead. Maybe more people will stand up with me and start advocating for inclusivity for the disabled in creative spaces instead of shunning them.
My answer to this OP’s question.
If used as an accessibility tool for a disability that is a barrier to writing, I do not believe it should be disclosed at all. As long as the AI is not doing the actual creative work for you. To force public disclosure for the sake of calling out and shaming the use of AI, is discriminatory. It restricts the author’s public access to a reading audience. An audience that is currently very hostile towards AI use in general.
The moment that tag is on there, many people won’t even open the book to discover what is inside. It could be an amazing work of fiction and still it would be shunned and rejected. To reject or shun someone for the use of an accessibility tool and remove their right to engage with the public because someone else abuses that tool is wrong.
Online reading forums are public spaces that every writer should have the right to access and not be restricted based on their use of an accessibility tool. And disabled writers shouldn’t have to choose between dignity and disclosure.
The Visibility Trap: Bad Actors and Broken Trust.
Best case in point I can think of to use as an analogy that is causing a similar stir to this situation is the use of service dogs here in the US.
A service dog is defined by the ADA as an accessibility tool and medical device that is trained to assist with a disability. Public access of service dog owners is being threatened with restriction to public spaces because of bad faith actors. Every day I see more posts going up about people with service dogs being denied access.
As a service dog owner myself, I have to worry about losing access to public spaces because people think it is acceptable to slap a service dog vest on a pet and take it wherever they like without regard to how that animal behaves in public.
I think the service dog analogy fits perfectly because when a well trained dog walks into a public space without a vest, you have no way of knowing whether it’s a service dog or simply a very well trained pet. You might suspect it isn’t a service dog, but it would be discriminatory to imply that.
To Vest or Not to Vest: The Choice Facing Disabled Writers
With service dogs, some disabled handlers prefer not to use vests because the visibility of the vest forces them to publicly identify their disability. It increases anxiety, invites judgment, and exposes them to stigma. Some don’t have a choice, a vest is the only way to ensure ambulatory safety. And some service dog handlers don’t mind the spotlight and proudly sport the vest and actively advocate for wider acceptance of disabilities, even inviting open discourse and education about the dog’s role in their everyday life.
I fall in that last camp. I don’t need a vest for mobility support and I am not afraid to use my disabilities to educate and advocate for disability rights. I don’t care who knows what my struggles are.
But there are those that would prefer to not be in the spotlight. Not deal with the anxiety and stigma. The ADA actually supports this stance — vests are not required, because forcing disabled people to label themselves is discriminatory. AI tags should not be required, they force disabled people to label themselves.
I hope you sit with this analogy and really think about how the fear mongering and push to force people to label their writing is harming a vulnerable population.
Writing Doesn’t Have a Monopoly on Corporate Gatekeeping.
Before vests became the expected norm, the only thing that distinguished a service dog from a pet was training. The dog’s behavior was the proof.
Over the years, laziness, ignorance, and a lack of proper education from HR departments has led to a push from business owners for a more visual way to “identify” service animals. Employees are no longer being taught ADA laws around service dog access.
Businesses who didn’t want to spend money on education and training on the proper etiquette of interacting with a handler, demanded a visual label for non-mobility service dogs as a mark of legality and acceptance that shouldn’t be there. This made it easier to pass the burden of discernment onto the handler and become a burden of proof.
This push for vests to be required, which the ADA has adamantly maintained they side with the handler on this issue, resulted in manufacturers deciding to solve the problem by making vest more accessible to all dog owners. Promoting them on pet supply websites. The thinking was make the vest a fashion accessory and more disabled people might voluntarily use them.
That led to vests becoming a necessity to access public spaces, which then in turn enabled bad faith actors to slap a vest on a dog and take it into public. Add in managers with poor training on how to spot a service dog and the legal rules around engagement with a service dog handler and the problem escalates.
They either let anything with a service vest in regardless of the animals behavior, or they unlawfully demand proof that the dog was indeed a service dog. Leading to an environment where the vests now represent what a service dog is rather than the dogs training. Tarnishing the reputation of actual service dogs. Making it harder for legitimate handlers to access public spaces with their dogs. People slap a vest on an untrained pet, and suddenly disabled handlers face suspicion, harassment, and gatekeeping. All because the visibility requirement was never meant for them in the first place.
AI tags function the same way. Bad faith actors use AI to create stories the lazy way and pass them off as actual human written stories. They don’t care for the craft and never will. This behavior has led to a public view of AI equals slop, just as the the service dog vest is now side eyed with suspicion. Just as not all dogs wearing a service vest are badly behaved pets, not all AI assisted writing is slop. Disabled people take great care to protect the public image that they present to the world with their accessibility tools.
Unimpeachable Excellence: Twice as Good, Half as Trusted
Actual disabled people with service dogs, whether through an organization or training the animal themselves, make sure their dog is the best representation of their role that they can be. We know that if we don’t have absolute control of our animal, we can be asked to leave the public space. We train our service dog meticulously to operate at a higher level than any average pet just to defend their right to exist in public without harassment. We do not allow carelessness in training to affect our public access. We have back up care plans in the event we need to board, to ensure a well meaning caretaker does not undo years of hard work. Anyone who has ever interacted with a real service dog, can see the difference immediately. You don’t need the vest to see that.
AI assisted writing is the same way. Disabled writers are emphatically embracing a tool that finally lets us bridge that cognitive divide and write the stories we want to write. Just as the service vest is no longer an accurate identifier of a well behaved service dog, labeling AI assisted works as such is not a valid indicator of slop vs good storytelling. All it takes is to actually open the cover and read to see the difference and labels prevent the cover from being opened.
Both these scenarios force disabled people to publicly defend their disability and their right to use accessibility tools. It creates anxiety and stigma, preventing the very public access they have a right to be a part of. In direct violation of ADA laws.
AI is the New Breed of Service Dog for Disabled Writers.
I strongly believe that if you use AI to help you bridge a cognitive gap, like what comes from certain neurodivergent profiles or TBIs, then it is an assistive device that should not be brought under scrutiny just to exist in public creative spaces.
Neurodivergent writers often struggle with the expression of emotion and this can translate into difficulty writing emotion. Asking an AI to give you examples of what a certain emotion would look like in writing and then using that information to write your scene is not the AI writing for you.
A person with a TBI who struggles with syntax, sentence structure, and word recall who spends over an hour describing a scene in their head in minute detail and then asks the AI to help them organize that information into coherent flowing sentences is not AI writing for them.
The AI did not create that story, the AI did not decide what generated text was kept and what was discarded, the AI did not control the plot, and I could go on. The vision, the story, is 100% the author’s pure imagination. The AI was only the tool that the author wielded to make that vision come to life on paper.
That is not AI generated story telling, that is AI adaptive workflow as an accessibility tool to overcome a disability. This is the AI equivalent of a service dog that is hard to distinguish from a well trained pet, but serves a single, sole purpose. To provide a specific task that helps a disabled person navigate their disability and meaningfully engage in equal public access.
I also believe if you heavily use AI to write your sentences for you, because you have a very vivid imagination, but are terrible at writing. But you control most aspects of the writing process to ensure the AI does not take over your writing voice and derail the plot, then that is AI assisted authorship and it should be disclosed.
This is no different than a person with a very well behaved dog as a pet who can take their pet out in public in restricted spaces like the hardware or pet store vs a service dog. They are both dogs, but one is just a pet and the other a legally defined medical device that is trained to assist a disabled person.
There is the same fine line between AI as an accessibility tool and AI as a convenience tool. One writer might say, “I use AI because it makes my workflow more efficient,” while another says, “I use AI because I’m disabled and I need it to overcome executive dysfunction.”
If a dog can be both based off of how it is utilized, then an AI can be both, based off how it is utilized.
But if all you do is throw a prompt into the AI, let it spit out a story and then put that out there as your own, then it is AI generated slop. That is like having that demon dog you can barely walk and is questionable whether it belongs at a dog park.
At least that is my take on it. And I will not stand idly by while myself and other disabled people are denied equal access because bad faith actors carelessly and callously destroy public trust.