Monthly Archives: September 2010

Signal Boost: Invitation to Respond to Government’s New Accessibility Standards from Citizens with Disabilities of Ontario (Canada)

Invitation to Respond to Government’s New Accessibility Standards
from Citizens with Disabilities of Ontario (CWDO)

The provincial government has now posted its proposed new accessibility standards. The new standards will cover accessible employment, transportation, and information and communications.

You are invited to help CWDO prepare a response to these standards by the government’s deadline of October 16, 2010. CWDO will be hosting a series of three on-line meetings to contribute to our response.

Where? IDEAL Auditorium 1 (our on-line conference centre)
Time? 1:30 to 3:30 pm, EDT
When?
Sunday, Sep 19 – Information & Communication proposed standard
Sunday, Sep 26 – Accessible Transportation proposed standard
Sunday, Oct 03 – Accessible Employment proposed standard

At all three sessions, members will be invited to comment on the common components of the standards. These sections address training, policy development, compliance and enforcement.

Time is short, so please read the proposed standards ahead of time.

More information can be found on our Accessibility Standards Committee page.

To join any or all of these events go to: CWDO

Recommended Reading for 13 September 2010

Warning: Offsite links are not safe spaces. Articles and comments in the links may contain ableist, sexist, and other -ist language and ideas of varying intensity. Opinions expressed in the articles may not reflect the opinions held by the compiler of the post and links are provided as topics of interest and exploration only. I attempt to provide extra warnings for material like extreme violence/rape; however, your triggers/issues may vary, so please read with care.

The Quixotic Autistic: Early Intervention: My two cents and my many apprehensions

The way I see it, early detection is the ultimate Pandora’s Box for people on the spectrum.

HP Blog: I Have Dissociative Identity Disorder: Disclosure DOs and DON’Ts

What’s comfortable for you may be unhealthy for someone else, and vice versa. With that in mind, what I offer you today isn’t advice on whether or not to reveal your DID diagnosis, but a short list of DOs and DON’Ts – things to keep in mind when considering disclosure.

Disability Scoop: Employment Gains Seen For People With Disabilities

Not only were more people working last month as compared to the month before, but more people were considered part of the workforce, meaning that they had work or were actively looking for it.

UN News Centre: At UN, countries call for strengthening of rights of persons with disabilities

Hundreds of delegates and civil society representatives took part in the three-day conference at UN Headquarters in New York to see how to better implement the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which came into force in 2008.

The convention, among other elements, asserts the rights to education, health, work, adequate living conditions, freedom of movement, freedom from exploitation and equal recognition before the law for persons with disabilities.

Midlife and Treachery (Thanks to Penny from Disability Studies at Temple U. for the link! Again!)

Disagreement on issues? Fine, lets.  But don’t decide I’m not a person if you disagree with me.

If you’re on Delicious, feel free to tag entries ‘disfem’ or ‘disfeminists,’ or ‘for:feminists’ to bring them to our attention! Link recommendations can also be emailed to recreading at disabledfeminists dot com. Please note if you would like to be credited, and under what name/site.

Signal Boost: Add Your Voice to the Leeds Metropolitan University Accessible Tourism Survey (UK)

Add Your Voice to the Leeds Metropolitan University Accessible Tourism Survey

This survey reviews the specific needs of travellers using a wheelchair or other mobility aids or those who simply experience some form of mobility limitation.

The data collected will be used for the thesis I am preparing as part of the requirements for my MSc in Responsible Tourism at Leeds Metropolitan University in the UK, where I am working under supervision of Dr Simon Woodward.

Please answer if you, or a person you often travel with, experience mobility problems when travelling.

This questionnaire is completely anonymous and the findings will be used for my academic research only

Signal Boost: Consultation on guidance about definition of disability in Equality Act 2010 (UK)

Consultation on guidance about definition of disability in Equality Act 2010

The Equality Act 2010 is a new piece of legislation that will replace the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA).

The Equality Act includes the legal definition of a disabled person who is protected from discrimination. This definition is slightly different from the definition used in the DDA. It will make the law easier to understand.

Because of this change, the government is updating the guidance that helps people to understand how the definition works. We have published draft guidance that reflects these changes and a consultation document, which asks for your views. We are seeking views on whether the draft guidance will help people understand the definition of disability.

We are particularly interested in views from organisations (such as courts and tribunals) that will use the guidance when deciding whether someone is a disabled person. It will also be of interest to people and organisations that give advice about the Act.

The consultation closes on 31 October 2010.

Please see our website for more information.

Recommended Reading for 10 September 2010

Warning: Offsite links are not safe spaces. Articles and comments in the links may contain ableist, sexist, and other -ist language and ideas of varying intensity. Opinions expressed in the articles may not reflect the opinions held by the compiler of the post and links are provided as topics of interest and exploration only. I attempt to provide extra warnings for material like extreme violence/rape; however, your triggers/issues may vary, so please read with care.

Clarissa’s Blog: So you’re telling me you don’t have autism?

I really admire you, you know. Not having autism must be so tough. My friend’s son was diagnosed with not having autism and she was heartbroken. She cried for three days. What do you mean why? Of course, you seem completely normal but have you seen those neurotypical people they show on TV? (In a dramatic whisper.) They are all freaky and weird and they keep banging their heads against the wall. Well, you are right, of course, anybody would bang their head against the wall if their mother cried for 3 days because they are the way they are, but still . . . It’s tragic for a parent to realize their child will never be happy, or have a career, or get married. Yes, it’s true, you seem pretty happy, and your career is great, and you even have a husband.

Switchin’ to glide: Maybe it’s the anti-depressants working

And now… I’m sitting here crying the biggest cry I have in years, wondering what life could have been like if I had been allowed to feel validated, or if I had ever been allowed to validate myself; because all of these small things together form a picture of person who has actually done alright, but I have felt–been made to feel–the whole time like a perpetual failure.

Ms. Marx: On Pop Culture: Anorexia jokes and celebrity diets

I don’t think there is ever an appropriate time for anorexia humor… it just isn’t funny. It is a very serious medical condition that kills women (and men, but mostly women). With websites purposefully encouraging anorexia, it needs to be clear that none of this is funny.

Please Tape Me Back Together: My head is spinning with questions

I’m frustrated.  My neurologist told me he thought I had a mini-stroke (TIA) but ran no tests.  He just told me to take an aspirin a day and asked me to show him my EDS.  Actually he didn’t ask he grabbed my hand and tried putting it backwards.  I don’t like people touching me so I took my hand away and bent it backwards.  It was a painful day anyway and that caused even more pain.  I was kinda pissed that he didn’t seem to believe me.  He’d never heard of EDS, either.  How could he not believe me when he didn’t even know what EDS is?

HR Morning.com: Employee commutes: New area for ADA accommodations? (Thanks to Codeman38 for the link!)

Would changing an employee’s commute qualify as a “reasonable accommodation” under the Americans with Disabilities Act? A federal appeals court says yes.

The case involves a woman who worked for a retail chain in Oregon as a wine steward. She developed a visual impairment that affected her depth perception in low-light conditions, which made it difficult for her to drive after dark.

She requested — and was granted — a schedule that allowed her to come in and leave work during daylight hours. The company didn’t run into any problems with her working the modified hours — indeed, sales in her department went up.

Nonetheless, the company reversed its decision.

When the woman refused to work her new shift — which would have required her to commute home after dark — she was fired.

If you’re on Delicious, feel free to tag entries ‘disfem’ or ‘disfeminists,’ or ‘for:feminists’ to bring them to our attention! Link recommendations can also be emailed to recreading at disabledfeminists dot com. Please note if you would like to be credited, and under what name/site.

Reactions, part 1

[Warning for somewhat graphic discussion of medical procedures and adverse allergic reactions.]

I have been dealing with weird, severe, and inexplicable allergic reactions since the age of 14.

Most of these reactions have been to food items; my known food allergies include peanuts, various tree nuts, and (wait for it) green bell peppers. Of course, I take great caution to avoid these foods and my exposure to them. Unfortunately, with my immune system, such caution is no guarantee that I won’t have an “attack” out of the blue.

The first “attack” I had, in fact, was one of those not caused by food. I was a teenager at the time, in Paris on vacation with my family. I don’t remember much about my initial symptoms other than I felt overly-warm very suddenly, and decided that it would be a good idea to take a cold bath in order to rectify the situation. My mom found me in the bathroom of our rented apartment, facedown on the tile floor and missing several items of clothing. I had figured, somehow, that putting my face on the tile floor as a method of cooling down would look less weird than sticking my entire head into the freezer. My face, which had initially turned bright red, swelled up so much that I soon found myself unable to see. I had quickly begun to resemble the Bob’s Big Boy logo; I should note here that if you ever start to resemble a famous food-related logo, you should probably go to the nearest hospital post-haste.

My Bob’s Big Boy transformation was quickly followed by giant, blotchy pink hives that appeared on my neck and shoulders. Joining the party somewhat late was a hot, almost volcanic feeling in my lungs that quickly morphed into breathing trouble. Severe breathing trouble. So my family (my mom, my dad, and my younger brother — who suggested that I not look at myself in any reflective surface so as not to become more freaked out) and I took to the streets of Paris in search of a hospital. We found one — after a quick visit to what we thought was a hospital but which actually turned out to be a convalescent home. At the ER, the staff took one look at me and immediately put me at the front of the queue; I was quickly whisked away to a magical land where a nurse tried to calm me down, completely in French, when I loudly protested the insertion of a large IV needle into the underside of my forearm. The only English-speaking doctor on staff, as it turned out, was on his day off, but came in to examine me and assure my family that I was going to be okay.

When we came back from vacation, I had another attack about a month later. And then another. And a few more, until one ER doctor suggested that I get a full round of allergy tests, more commonly known as “scratch tests.”  The scratch tests revealed a substantial peanut and tree nut allergy. I took care to avoid these foods, or any foods that may have come into contact with them. Unfortunately, I still kept having attacks, even when I avoided the dreaded peanuts and tree nuts. I still have them, approximately once every 3-4 months.

Sometimes, I get them as a result of cross-contamination if I eat at a restaurant. Sometimes, I get them for no reason at all — even if I haven’t eaten for a while. The symptoms tend to be fairly consistent: first, a scratchy feeling will start in my throat and lungs, followed by wheezing. Then comes breathing trouble, which tends to feel like an elephant is standing on my chest. Usually, my eyes will then swell up to the point that I cannot open them all the way, or see. Sometimes, I get gastrointestinal trouble as well, the symptoms and signs of which are not things that I can discuss in polite company due to general grossness and/or TMI.

The first five to ten minutes of these attacks are, generally speaking, the worst part(s). By now, my battle plan for dealing with these attacks is well-established: Take a shot or two of my inhaler at the first signs of trouble (usually breathing difficulties plus another symptom), then four or five antihistamine pills. Of course, it takes a few minutes for these things to kick in, which is part of why the “waiting” part is so physically painful. During these first few minutes, I am in some sort of hellish allergy-limbo: it feels like someone or something has put some bricks on my chest and torso, I can’t see or can barely see, and it feels like my intestines are being vacuumed out of me — and the only thing I can do is wait for the medication to start working. I generally consider myself to be a patient person, but nothing will sap your patience like having to wait out a potentially life-threatening medical emergency.

And if that doesn’t work, I have to go to the next level, which is using epipenephrine, a self-contained steroid shot to be injected into the thigh in case my breathing is so severely compromised that I pass out or am in danger of not getting enough air into my lungs.

For these sorts of attacks, there is really no pat, inspirational or life-affirming end, so much as a screeching halt after the medication actually starts working. And this total lack of inspiration or an end in sight is also reflected in some of the responses I have gotten from many abled people in regards to my “allergy issues” (to be addressed in part two).

World Suicide Prevention Day

Description appears below
A golden butterfly in a circle, with "Support Suicide Prevention Awareness"
Today, September 10th, is World Suicide Prevention Day.

Being suicidal, especially if you have long-term thoughts about suicide and suicide ideation, can be a very isolating and lonely experience. Do you tell your friends and family? If you do, how will they react? What about your job? Will you be forcedly committed into psychiatric care? Will people assume that if you haven’t actually harmed yourself, you’re not really suicidal and just faking it for “attention”? If you’re happy and having a good time today, does that mean you’re not really suicidal at all? What exactly do you say, and who do you say it to?

These are the things I wish I could tell you:

Be as kind to yourself as you can. If you are having long-term suicidal thoughts, you are ill. You are not weak, you are not failing, you are not letting anyone down. You are sick, and just like if you had a bad cold, or some sort of infections, you need to take care of yourself, and let your body and your mind recover.

There is not a quick fix. Talking to a friend, or a professional, or a help line, taking medication, spending some time in short or long term care, these are all helpful but take take time, something you can take as much of as you need. I wish I could promise you that talking to someone would force your mind and your body to heal, but it won’t. This is not because you’re a failure, but because you are ill, and again, you need to give yourself time, because you are not a failure, and you are not letting anyone down.

You do not have to be perfect. Just like someone with a cold or an infection may skip their cold medication or their antibiotics, and as a result may get sicker or set back their recovery, you too can end up screwing something up. This does not make you a failure, and you have not let anyone down. You are still worthy of getting the help you need, and you can still reach out to people who want to help you. Again, there is no quick fix, and you are allowed to make mistakes.

I cannot promise you that everyone around you will be accepting. It is not unusual in my travels through the internet to find people writing about how people who attempt or commit suicide are “selfish” or “bad”. These people are wrong. You are ill, and that is not the same thing at all. But there are people who are trained to help you, and are willing to help you in the road to recovery, no matter how hard or how long it is. Some of these people will be strangers, and some of them will be friends or loved ones. I know it’s socially isolating and scary, but please try and reach out, because they want to help you. Here is a small list of resources that may be helpful to you.

Your pain, and how you feel, it is all real. You are allowed to feel these things. You are allowed to be who you are. None of this makes you bad, or undeserving, or unlovable.

I hope you find what you need.

Recommended Reading for 09 September 2010

Warning: Offsite links are not safe spaces. Articles and comments in the links may contain ableist, sexist, and other -ist language and ideas of varying intensity. Opinions expressed in the articles may not reflect the opinions held by the compiler of the post and links are provided as topics of interest and exploration only. I attempt to provide extra warnings for material like extreme violence/rape; however, your triggers/issues may vary, so please read with care.

Raising my Boychick: Musings on mental health, in-patient therapy, and ableism: or, why isn’t there a “Hooha Behavioral Center”?

There is so much broken in mental health services, I hardly know where to begin unraveling it. Should I have sought this sort of care? Certainly in a less-ableist society, it would have occurred to me far sooner. But what sort of “care” would I have received, even with relative protections of being a male-partnered middle-class white woman? What sorts of traumas might I have risked acquiring through the experience? Would I even have been admitted, or dismissed as not-crazy-enough, and what would the pain of failed help-seeking have done to me?

Jack and Dilley: Thoughts on Therapy: Right Livlihood: Veteran Farms (Thanks to SavvyChristine for the link!)

Veterans Farm, an organic blueberry farm in the Jacksonville area of Florida, takes a life-affirming approach to empowering disabled veterans to heal, return to work, and reintegrate into American society. It was begun by Adam Burke, a veteran who came back from Iraq with PTSD and a closed head injury. Seeking to come to terms with his disabilities and wartime experiences, he remembered peaceful and satisfying work on his family’s farm growing up. He realized “horticulture therapy” provided an ideal environment for rehabilitation, and talked his wife into buying a small farm.

JF Activists: ‘The Closed Digital Door:’ State Benefits’ Websites Inaccessible to PWD

The report, “The Closed Digital Door: State Public Benefits Agencies’ Failure to Make Websites Accessible to People with Disabilities and Usable for Everyone,” describes barriers to access for people with disabilities when applying for cash and other benefits online, requesting an application, searching the website, or contacting the agency by email. These accessibility problems violate the Americans with Disabilities Act, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, and many state web accessibility laws and policies.

The Globe and Mail: Caregivers suffering depression, rage

“The message here is that if we’re going to help seniors stay in the community – and we should – then we critically have to look at the needs of caregivers,” said Linda Jackson, executive director of community and ambulatory programs at Baycrest, a Toronto health-care facility that specializes in care of the elderly.

CBC News: OxyContin worries misplaced: pain experts

In Quebec, opioid use doubled over 14 years, said Kristen Reidel, a master’s student in epidemiology at Montreal’s McGill University.

When Reidel presented her findings on opioid prescribing trends in Quebec at the World Congress on Pain in Montreal this week, she said she didn’t find an increase for the youngest age group.

Rather, the highest increase in opioid use was among people over the age of 80, who tend to suffer more chronic pain.

If you’re on Delicious, feel free to tag entries ‘disfem’ or ‘disfeminists,’ or ‘for:feminists’ to bring them to our attention! Link recommendations can also be emailed to recreading at disabledfeminists dot com. Please note if you would like to be credited, and under what name/site.

Body Image & Disability: An Entry Into The Conversation

A long time ago, I said this:

People with disabilities, especially women, have all the same pressures currently non-disabled people do to look “good enough”, with added bonus of being either non-sexualised or hyper-sexualised, as well as having people infantize them to an incredible degree.

Talking about disability and self-esteem and body image is very difficult for me. People look at me and see a woman without a disability (or a woman with a non-evident one), and I pass. I don’t get the odd looks that a woman of my age (or younger, or older) using a cane or crutches would. I don’t get the pats on the head that women who use wheelchairs report, and I don’t have people leaping out of the way when I’m using a motorized scooter.

But at the same time, women like me are often used as stand-ins for “horrible”. Whether that’s the simple of “she took off her glasses and suddenly she was beautiful!”, or the more complicated of “oh my gosh! the woman I had sex with is actually a crazy person! Quick, let us make many movies about crazy = bunny-boiler = grotesque!”, I’m well aware that women like me are bad, ugly inside, and unacceptable.

These things add a whole other layer to the conversations that many women, feminist and non, have about self esteem and body image. We are all inundated with the constant barrage of White, Long-Haired, Slender (But Not Too Slender), Tall (But Not Too Tall), Unblemished, Healthy-looking, Young women in most advertising and fashion spreads, television shows, movies, and even on our book covers.[1. The last one is so ubiquitous that until just now I didn’t realise that of all the non-fiction books on my desk about disability, only one has an actual image of visibly disabled people on it. Most of them have very plain covers, or abstract-type art on them.]

At the same time, though, poster children and the pity parade are a fairly common image of disabled children – whether with visible or non-evident disabilities – that present people with disabilities as weak, as undesirable, as needing of pity – and always, always, always, as children. Very rarely are images of self-possessed, happy, disabled adults shown, unless they are in one of the “he’s so brave” “look at what she’s overcome” news stories.

I don’t know how this affects other people, or how they deal with it. I know that when Don first got his cane, and then his wheelchair, his self-esteem and image of himself took a hit, and it took a while for me to convince him that yes, I still found him attractive (and I can’t tell you how much I love that wheelchair, since my sexy sexy husband now has energy!). I know for me it would be nice to see images of Actual Crazy Women who aren’t mockeries of women like me, but treated like actual people. It would be nice to see casual fashion spreads with people with evident disabilities in them, rather than only seeing “diversity matters!” posters that include maybe one (male) wheelchair user, usually white.

As I said, I find these things very hard to talk about, because in many ways I don’t even know where to start. While to some extent discussing pop culture and representations there is important, how do we, as individuals, deal with our own self-esteem issues? How do we, as a group, tackle the constant attacks on people with visible disabilities to hide parts of themselves? Make yourself more approachable by putting sparkles on your cane! Soup up your wheelchair and maybe someone will ask you a question! Hide your obvious aid-devices so that they don’t offend people! Cake on make-up so no one can see your scars!

I think there’s so much here to talk about. Please, tell me your thoughts.

Recommended Reading for Wednesday, September 8, 2010

Warning: Offsite links are not safe spaces. Articles and comments in the links may contain ableist, sexist, and other -ist language and ideas of varying intensity. Opinions expressed in the articles may not reflect the opinions held by the compiler of the post and links are provided as topics of interest and exploration only

Today’s Recommended Reading is focusing on Service Animals!

Sharon @ After Gadget has been putting up videos of Service Animal Training. All the videos have transcripts at the source.

Level 2 Test Videos Part 1

Here’s our handling test. Test requires handling all paws, ears, and tail, without the dog fussing. On day one, I did it with him standing (because he was hyper), but that’s not typically how I do handling. I feel like he did pass it — he let my dad pick him up (twice!) so he could hold him to weigh him. I thought that was pretty good for someone he’s only met about three or four times. (For the record, Barnum weighed 64 pounds.)

Level 2 Tests Part 2

This is the first part of our L2 Crate test — the crate in my bedroom. The criterion for Level Two crate is that the dog enters the crate with no more than two cues, allows the door to be opened and shut, with no pawing or vocalizing. This is the crate we use the most. We had a false start, but I decided to consider it a fluke, because we use this behavior all the time.

Service Animal Discrimination: It’s more common than you think

Via Patient C’s: DC Cabs – No Rides for Service Animals, Change.Org has People with Service Dogs Can’t Catch a Cab in DC: (There’s an Action Item at the link)

ERC sent testers throughout the city in pairs: one blind person with a service dog and one person without. The people were “matched” according to race and age; the only difference was the dog. The person with the service dog was positioned so the cab would see them first, but a full 50 percent of the time, the driver ignored them in favor of picking up the person without the canine companion. Check out the video below — you can see several drivers pulling up the blind person, slowing down and then passing them by. In another 10 percent of the cases, the drivers added illegal surcharges for the dog.

Charles Crawford, an ERC member with a service dog, said being denied a cab is not only annoying, it’s “both hurtful and an insult to those of us who must rely upon the loving assistance of our dogs to travel independently.”

Speaker’s Corner: Shocker: DC Taxis Don’t Like To Pick Up Blind People With Guide Dogs

And one of the saddest parts of this entire thing is that the system in place for reporting problems with a taxi driver is to write down the taxi number and then call the taxi operator. Blind people can’t participate in such a system.

Brilliant Mind, Broken Body: Travel Fail

The driver said, “You didn’t mention the dog when you called dispatch. You have to mention the dog.” I told him that I didn’t have to, because legally they had to transport service dogs. He repeated himself. Then he said he wasn’t the cab who was sent for me; they would be along in a few minutes. He got into his cab and drove off.

I’m sure all of you out there in cyberland have seen through what he said. Of course he was the cab sent for me! I live on a little tiny residential street. Cabs are rare here, and I end up calling them more often than anyone else on the street, because I have the most need of outside transportation.

In the news:

More airports create areas for pets to take care of business (via The Disability Law & Policy e-Newsletter)

Dogs need to go, too. So airports are adding doggie restrooms.

Airports say “pet relief areas” enhance customer service. But they’re also being nudged by a federal rule that orders airlines to work with airports to install facilities for travelers who have service dogs.

Dogged by Lawsuit After Barring Service Animal From Office, Lawyer Settles for $50K

A Colorado Springs, Colo., lawyer who refused to allow a veterinarian and her service dog to enter his law office for a scheduled deposition in a civil action has agreed to pay $50,000 to settle a federal discrimination suit.

The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division filed a complaint in the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado last November against Patric LeHouillier of LeHouillier & Associates. The suit alleged LeHouillier violated the Americans with Disabilities Act when he refused to allow the woman and her dog — and the woman’s lawyer — to enter the LeHouillier law office in December 2006.

This is an older news article that Ginny Tea brought to my attention, but I think it is still relevant: Creature Comforts [7 pages long]

Jamie Hais, a spokeswoman for the D.O.J., said she couldn’t comment on why the department suggested the species restriction. But its proposal expressed concerns about public-health risks and said that when the original A.D.A. was written, without specifying species, “few anticipated” the variety of animals people would attempt to use.

“That’s simply not true,” says Frieden, who was an architect of the original A.D.A. While drafting the regulations, he said, Congressional staff members had long discussions about defining “service animal” and whether a trained pony could qualify. “There was general consensus that the issue revolved around the question of function, not form,” he says. “So, in fact, if that pony provided assistance to a person with a disability and enabled that person to pursue equal opportunity and nondiscrimination, then that pony could be regarded as a service animal.” They discussed the possibility of birds and snakes for psychiatric disorders, he said, but one of their biggest concerns was that the A.D.A. shouldn’t exclude service monkeys, which were already working with quadriplegics. Since then, however, monkeys have become the most contested assistance-animal species of all.

And, a video, courtesy of Speaker’s Corner (transcript follows):

Video opens with an image of a Golden Lab (?) in a service animal vest & harness. Text reads: “No Dogs Allowed: Discriminaition by Taxicans Against People Who Use Service Dogs”

A Report By: The Equal Rights Center (ERC), The WAshington Lawyer’s Committee for Civil Rights & Urban Affiars (WLC), Hogan Lovells US LLP.

Screen image changes to a person (who appears to be a white woman to me) with long blond hair standing on the sidewalk with a black dog.

Text: More than 25 million individuals in the United States report having vision loss; approxinmately 2.5 million of those are legally blind.

Federal Law requires taxicab drivers to allow service dogs in their vehicles, and prohibits them from charging a surchage, higher fare, or extra fee for transporting a service dog.

Despite these protections, people encounter discrimination on a daily basis.

Image changes to a dynamic one of a busy street. Cars whiz by a white-appearing person signalling for a taxi with a service animal. A taxi drives by and then stops for a person just 100 yards down the road.

Text: To view the report, visit www.equalrightscenter.org

Image changes to a still image of a person standing on the side of the road to signal a taxi – just beyond them is another person signaling a taxi with a dog at their feet – the dog appears to be wearing a service animal harness.

Text: The ERC conducted test in the District, each included two individuals, one with a service dog and one without, who stood on the same side of the block.

Image changes to a dynamic image of cars whizzing down a busy street with the two people in the above image standing just a few meters apart. A taxi slows down in front of the person with the service animal, then slowly drives up to the person without an animal, ignoring the person with the service animal entirely.

Image changes to a TAXI sign with a wheelchair symbol.

Text: In 60% of these cases, the tester with a service dog was subjected to at least one form of discriminatory treatment.

Image changes to a dynamic one of a busy street. Cars whiz by a person signalling for a taxi with a service animal. A taxi drives by and then stops for a person just 100 yards down the road. (This image is the same as the one described above.)

Image changes to a static image of a person who appears to me to be a white woman seated outside, holding a white cane.

Text: “These instances are both hurtful and an insult ot those of us who must rely upon the loving assistance of our dogs to travel independently” – ERC Member, Charles Crawford

Image changes to another service dog user signaling a taxi on the street. The taxi drives right by, but picks up another person without a service animal just a few car lengths away.

Image changes to a static image of someone holding a golden lab (?) dog.

Text: “Cabbies go whizzing by and I can’t see to know if they have somebody in their cab or if they don’t.” – ERC Member, Stan Berman

Image changes again to a taxi passing right by a person with a service animal signaling and poicking someone up just a few car lenghts away.

Image changes to a person with a service animal opening a taxi door.

Text: Help advance civil rights and learn more about what can be done to end discrimination against indivdiuals who use servive dogs.

Learn more and download the report at www.equalrightscenter.org

If you’re on Delicious, feel free to tag entries ‘disfem’ or ‘disfeminists,’ or ‘for:feminists’ to bring them to our attention! Link recommendations can also be emailed to recreading at disabledfeminists dot com. Please note if you would like to be credited, and under what name/site.