Advocacy

The anti-AI crowd keeps saying AI users aren’t using their brains. For multiply disabled people, AI is the accommodation that makes thinking possible.

Without a written standing order, every meal becomes a negotiation, and I am the one who loses every time.

Most writing about disabled life focuses on what’s hard. This is what two days where things actually worked looked like for me.

AI isn’t a writing assistant for me. It’s infrastructure. It’s the difference between thoughts trapped in my head and thoughts that become articles, code, advocacy, and community. And watermarking that can’t tell the difference between replacement and enablement threatens all of it.

I was valedictorian at the Texas School for the Blind with the highest test scores in my grade and four scholarships. Two weeks before graduation, I had to go home. They stripped everything. I got my diploma in the mail.

The gap between what I know I’m capable of and what my brain will let me do. About executive dysfunction, initiation, and the feeling that your own mind is working against you.

Fatigue from chronic illness doesn’t respond to rest. I picture it as a wave coming toward me. Caffeine, music, a splash of water on my face are my surfboard. Sometimes they hold. Sometimes the wave flings me off anyway.

The ultimate goal is an organization for multiply disabled people. But most of us were taught we can’t contribute before we ever got the chance to try. The school rebuilds what the systems took.

The federal government created ABLE accounts so disabled people could receive funds without losing benefits. No fundraising platform will deposit to them. That’s not how this is supposed to work.

I’ve been sitting with a vision for months. A learning program designed for multiply disabled people from the ground up. Not accommodations bolted onto a broken system, but something built for us as the default case. This isn’t a launch. It’s a ramp.