TIKTOKER PAUL SHARES THE REALITY OF LIVING WITH BLINDNESS AND WHY FAKE SERVICE DOG VESTS ARE SO DANGEROUS

PEOPLE

 

TikToker Paul Shares the Reality of Living with Blindness — and Why Fake Service Dog Vests Are So Dangerous

By Cara Lynn Shultz  Published on June 10, 2024 05:57PM EDT

 

TikToker Paul — from the wildly popular duo Matthew and Paul — remembers the exact moment he knew something was wrong with his eyes.

 

“I was on a camping trip when I was a kid in eastern Washington,” he says, adding that he was around eight at the time. “Everybody was pointing out constellations in the sky and I looked up and I just couldn't see anything. And my brother was pointing out the Big Dipper and I was feeling the FOMO, so in my own frustration, pretended I could see.”

 

He tells PEOPLE that it wasn’t until he was 16, and trying to learn to drive, that “we knew something was definitely very wrong with my eyes.”

 

The diagnosis: retinitis pigmentosa which, according to the National Eye Institute, causes the “cells in the retina [to] break down slowly over time, causing vision loss.”

 

Now the Seattle resident, along with his husband Matthew, share how Paul navigates life and his career as a graphic designer — all while while dealing with a degenerative eye disease — on their TikTok account.

 

This past April, Paul shared that he and his guide dog, Mr. Maple, were denied access to a local restaurant by a staffer who didn’t believe that Paul was really blind — or that Mr. Maple was really a legitimate guide dog, in spite of his harness indicating that he was.

 

The post immediately went viral, with 2.2 million likes and more than 13 million views.

 

But what happened to Paul is part of a growing trend, as Chris Diefenthaler, Executive Director for Assistance Dogs International, tells PEOPLE.

 

“Handlers who have trained assistance dogs are still continuing to be denied access,” she says, adding that along with restaurants, ride shares often “just kind of go right on by and don't stop.”

 

Diefenthaler and Paul both tell PEOPLE that the reason service dogs are often looked at with a skeptical eye is because of a proliferation of fake "guide dog" vests, which can be easily purchased online.

 

In fact, Paul was originally denied access to the restaurant because the staffer had dealt with an unruly "service dog" the day before.

 

“It's not coming from a malicious place. People love their animals,” Paul says. “They want to take them everywhere, right? But now that I'm on the other side of it, I realize how it's impacting the lives of people who really need these dogs. Many of them are life-saving.”

 

He continued: “Maple saved my life. He has stopped me from cars breaking traffic laws downtown. He’s blocked me.”

 

There are two types of service dogs, Diefenthaler tells PEOPLE.

 

“The term assistance dog is more the generic term that covers guide hearing and service dogs. And guide dogs are specific to the visually impaired or blind,” she says.

 

“Service dogs is a much broader category, and it really encompasses multiple types of disabilities, many of them invisible disabilities,” she says. For example, some dogs can alert their owner that they’re about to have a seizure.

 

“Diabetic service dogs detect low blood sugar," Diefenthaler says, and “could alert their individual that they're about to have or that they're having a low blood trigger — so they can take appropriate action.”

 

“All would be considered invisible disabilities,” she says.

 

During his restaurant encounter, Paul recalls how he was told, " 'You don't look blind.' ”

 

“I tried to explain to him [that] I have a pinpoint of vision at the center of my eye,” says Paul. "And what we do online every day is educate people about the spectrum of blindness.”

 

Most people who are legally blind retain some sight, Verywell Health reports.

 

Paul hopes “that my platform and these instances and more videos like this can begin to chip away at those stereotypes and educate everybody to understand that the spectrum of disabilities is far outside of what most people assume they are.”