Generative artificial intelligence (AI) is often framed in higher education as a disruptive threat to academic integrity. This paper reframes AI through Critical Disability Studies (CDS) and Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), positioning it not as a glitch in the academic system, but as a mirror revealing deeply embedded norms of ability, legitimacy, and professionalism. Drawing on policy documents from three Canadian research-intensive universities, the analysis identifies how AI is constructed as an intrusion, authenticity is defined through compliance, policy language embeds normative values, and students bear individual responsibility for navigating structural barriers. Through a CDS lens, these findings parallel the treatment of disability accommodations—conditional, surveilled, and often approached with suspicion. Mandated disclosure of AI use mirrors ableist logics that require students to continually justify their legitimacy, disproportionately affecting disabled, neurodivergent, racialized, and multilingual learners. Rather than banning or surveilling AI, this work argues for policies grounded in access, autonomy, and relational accountability. Recommendations include reframing disclosure as voluntary, recognizing AI-assisted work as valid scholarly labour, embedding Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles co-designed with disabled users, and rejecting punitive surveillance models. By centring disability justice, the paper positions AI as a potential prosthetic of epistemic survival—supporting communication, belonging, and agency in terrains historically hostile to difference. Ultimately, the question is not how students can sound more academic, but what academia must hear if it is to create equitable and inclusive futures.

Authors:
Steven Sheppard, University of Calgary, Canada

About the Presenter(s)
Steven Sheppard is a current doctoral student at the Werklund School of Education at the University of Calgary. Steven is currently working on his dissertation as it relates to inclusion, sport and disability within the Albertan K- 12 school system

See this presentation on the full schedule – Wednesday Schedule

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