Encouraging hybrid legislation

Greetings. Here's great news on the hybrid car front. This message was forwarded to a guide dog list I'm on from another list. Enjoy.

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Subject: Legislative Alert - Motor Vehicle Safety Act

Dear Fellow Federationists:

I am writing to report that all of our hard work on the issue of silent cars
is paying off. Language that will protect the blind and others from the
danger posed by silent hybrid and electric vehicles has been favorably
reported to the United States House of Representatives by the Committee on
Energy and Commerce as part of the Motor Vehicle Safety Act of 2010 (H.R.
5381). This legislation, which is a comprehensive bill to address numerous
vehicle safety issues raised by the recent Toyota recalls, now includes
language agreed to by the National Federation of the Blind, the Alliance of
Automobile Manufacturers, and the Association of International Automobile
Manufacturers. If passed by the House of Representatives and adopted by the
Senate, this language will require the Department of Transportation to issue
regulations requiring a minimum sound standard for hybrid and electric
automobiles.



This victory is a product of our hard work and the cooperation of the
automobile industry, but we will need to remain vigilant to make sure this
bill becomes law. We will keep you apprised of developments and let you
know if action needs to be taken to secure this victory.



Thank you again for all you do.



Sincerely,

Jesse M. Hartle
Government Programs Specialist
NATIONAL FEDERATION OF THE BLIND

Exciting guide dog advocacy announcement

Greetings. I received this information in my email recently and thought it appropriate to post here. Feel free to share as appropriate with others you know that use guide dogs, no matter what school or support/advocacy organization they may belong to. Enjoy.

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Please circulate the following message as widely as appropriate!


Dear All,
I am pleased to announce that the National Association of Guide Dog Users, a strong and proud division of the National Federation of the Blind, has been awarded a grant from the NFB's Imagination Fund to develop and implement a nationwide toll-free Education & Advocacy Hotline. This hotline will provide information about the rights of disabled people to be accompanied by service animals under state & federal laws. It is our goal to provide summaries and full texts of each state statute, information about the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Air Carrier Access Act, and the Fair Housing Act, as well as specific guidance to particular industries, such as health care facilities, taxicabs, restaurants, and places of lodging. In addition, trained advocates will be available for personal assistance. Our projection is to begin beta testing in january and have the hotline fully functional by Spring 2010. As this initiative unfolds, messages will be sent to the NAGDU list, so you will be the first to know. If you have any comments or suggestions for specific features of this hotline, please send these comments to me at

President@nfb-nagdu.org

If you would like to subscribe to the email list of the National Association of Guide Dog Users, you may do so by going to

http://www.nfbnet.org

click on "Join or drop nfbnet mailing lists", find the link to the National Association of Guide Dog Users (NAGDU), and complete the subscription information. Once you have subscribed to the list, please send a message introducing yourself. I look forward to being of service to you!

Fraternally yours,
Marion Gwizdala, President
National Association of Guide Dog Users
National Federation of the Blind

Update on proposed DOJ changes

Greetings. I just received this from a guide dog related email list and thought it appropriate to share. The bottom line: I suppose that those with exotic or other types of domestic service animals can continue to use their animals to serve themselves, until some point in the future. I do hope that the regulations are acted upon by the appropriate entities, since it would very much narrow the field of perspective service animals that could be used. Enjoy.

Proposed ADA Regulations Withdrawn from OMB Review

On January 21, 2009, the Department of Justice notified the Office of
Management and Budget (OMB) that the Department has withdrawn its draft
final rules to amend the Department's regulations implementing title
II and title III from the OMB review process. This action was taken in
response to a memorandum from the President's Chief of Staff directing
the Executive Branch agencies to defer publication of any new
regulations until the rules are reviewed and approved by officials
appointed by President Obama. No final action will be taken by the
Department with respect to these rules until the incoming officials have
had the opportunity to review the rulemaking record. Incoming officials
will have the full range of rule-making options available to them under
the Administrative Procedure Act.

Withdrawal of the draft final rules does not affect existing ADA
regulations. Title II and title III entities must continue to follow the
Department's existing ADA regulations, including the ADA Standards for
Accessible Design.

An interesting twist on DOJ proposed changes

Greetings. I came across this blog post from the author of that NY Times article a couple of weeks ago, regarding narrowing the definition of service animals. The post is entitled, DOJ's Proposed Ban of Non-canine Service Animals Is Bad News for Disabled Muslims. It seems that this hot button issue goes beyond the blindness community and into the Muslem community. Who'd have thought? Enjoy.

What is a service animal?

Greetings. I received the following article from an email list. Though the article is long, it does a good job of describing service animals and presenting arguments, both for and against, what can constitute a service animal. Personally, I applaud the effort by the DOJ to limit the definition of a service animal. Too many people are trying to make their own definitions of which animals to use and trying to justify them with conditions which I don't think are legit disabilities, or lifestyle limiting conditions that provoke the use of a service animal. Also, too many people are ordering certificates that claim to protect the person and say that their animal is a service animal, when it may not be. And, too many people are training their own service animals. I understand the reasons why someone might want to train their own service animal. There may be qualified people out there that can do this. However, when there's a problem, like when someone questions if that person should be using a service animal, or if they ever need to prove that they need a service animal or to justify the animal that they are using, there's no school or other organization to back them up. For instance, if someone ever doubts that Gucci, my Seeing Eye dog, is a service animal or disagrees with any of the techniques I use with her, I can always tell them to call the school, knowing that The Seeing Eye will straighten them out. Someone without a school can't do this as easily. Finally, I think that the only animals that should be defined as service animals are dogs and monkeys. In the eighties, a lot of publicity was made of monkeys helping those who were paralysed in some way. As long as the animal has been trained to actively performa task that benefits the person, such as getting things for a paralysed person or guiding a blind person, even detecting and preventing a seizure or low blood sugar incident, then they fit the definition of a service animal in my view. Those animals, such as monkeys, that just ride around in carriges and don't appear to offer any benefit, do not. Think I'm stretching things, read the article below and look for the woman in it who pushes her monkey in a carrige, but calls it a "service animal." Those with mental conditions or who want a "therapy" or "comfort" dog also don't fit the definition of service animals. Basically, the definition is too broad and needs some narrowing. If someone can show me how taking a pig on an airplane is a comfort, for them or the pig, then I'll gladly reconsider. As you can see, this is a hot issue in the blind community right now and a number of people have strong opinions on it. Enjoy and as always, please excuse any formatting errors.

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Creature Comforts - Assistance Animals Now Come in All Shapes and Sizes - NYTimes



January 4, 2009



Creature Comforts



By REBECCA SKLOOT



ON HALLOWEEN NIGHT IN A SUBURB of Albany, a group of children dressed as vampires and witches ran past a middle-aged woman in plain clothes. She gripped a leather harness — like the kind used for Seeing Eye dogs — which was attached to a small, fuzzy black-and-white horse barely tall enough to reach the woman’s hip.



”Cool costume,” one of the kids said, nodding toward her.



But she wasn’t dressed up. The woman, Ann Edie, was simply blind and out for an evening walk with Panda, her guide miniature horse.



There are no sidewalks in Edie’s neighborhood, so Panda led her along the street’s edge, maneuvering around drainage ditches, mailboxes and bags of raked leaves. At one point, Panda paused, waited for a car to pass, then veered into the road to avoid a group of children running toward them swinging glow sticks. She led Edie onto a lawn so she wouldn’t hit her head on the side mirror of a parked van, then to a traffic pole at a busy intersection, where she stopped and tapped her hoof. ”Find the button,” Edie said. Panda raised her head inches from the pole so Edie could run her hand along Panda’s nose to find and press the ”walk” signal button.



Edie isn’t the only blind person who uses a guide horse instead of a dog — there’s actually a Guide Horse Foundation that’s been around nearly a decade. The obvious question is, Why? In fact, Edie says, there are many reasons: miniature horses are mild-mannered, trainable and less threatening than large dogs. They’re naturally cautious and have exceptional vision, with eyes set far apart for nearly 360-degree range. Plus, they’re herd animals, so they instinctively synchronize their movements with others. But the biggest reason is age: miniature horses can live and work for more than 30 years. In that time, a blind person typically goes through five to seven guide dogs. That can be draining both emotionally and economically, because each one can cost up to $60,000 to breed, train and place in a home.



”Panda is almost 8 years old,” her trainer, Alexandra Kurland, told me. ”If Panda were a dog, Ann would be thinking about retiring her soon and starting over, but their relationship is just getting started. They’re still improving their communication and learning to read each other’s bodies. It’s the difference between dating for a few years and being married so long you can finish each other’s sentences.”



Edie has nothing against service dogs — she has had several. One worked beautifully. Two didn’t — they dragged her across lawns chasing cats and squirrels, even pulled her into the street chasing dogs in passing cars. Edie doesn’t worry about those sorts of things with Panda because miniature horses are less aggressive. Still, she says, ”I would never say to a blind person, ’Run out and get yourself a guide horse,’ because there are definite limitations.” They eat far more often than dogs, and go to the bathroom about every two or three hours. (Yes, Panda is house-trained.) Plus, they can’t curl up in small places, which makes going to the movies or riding in airplanes a challenge. (When miniature horses fly, they stand in first class or bulkhead because they don’t fit in standard coach.)



What’s most striking about Edie and Panda is that after the initial shock of seeing a horse walk into a cafe, or ride in a car, watching them work together makes the idea of guide miniature horses seem utterly logical. Even normal. So normal, in fact, that people often find it hard to believe that the United States government is considering a proposal that ’ would force Edie and many others like her to stop using their service animals. But that’s precisely what’s happening, because a growing number of people believe the world of service animals has gotten out of control: first it was guide dogs for the blind; now it’s monkeys for quadriplegia and agoraphobia, guide miniature horses, a goat for muscular dystrophy, a parrot for psychosis and any number of animals for anxiety, including cats, ferrets, pigs, at least one iguana and a duck. They’re all showing up in stores and in restaurants, which is perfectly legal because the Americans With Disabilities Act (A.D.A.) requires that service animals be allowed wherever their owners want to go.



Some people enjoy running into an occasional primate or farm animal while shopping. Many others don’t. This has resulted in a growing debate over how to handle these animals, as well as widespread suspicion that people are abusing the law to get special privileges for their pets. Increasingly, business owners, landlords and city officials are challenging the legitimacy of noncanine service animals and refusing to accommodate them. Animal owners are responding with lawsuits and complaints to the Department of Justice. This August, the Arizona Game and Fish Department ordered a woman to get rid of her chimpanzee, claiming that she brought it into the state illegally — she disputed this and sued for discrimination, arguing that it was a diabetes-assistance chimp trained to fetch sugar during

hypoglycemic episodes.



Cases like this are raising questions about where to draw the lines when it comes to the needs and rights of people who rely on these animals, of businesses obligated by law to accommodate them and of everyday civilians who — because of health and safety concerns or just general discomfort — don’t want monkeys or ducks walking the aisles of their grocery stores.



A few months ago, in a cafe in St. Louis, I met a man named Jim Eggers, who uses an assistance parrot, Sadie, to help control his psychotic tendencies. Eggers looks like a man who has been fighting his whole life. He is muscular, with a buzz cut, several knocked-out teeth and many scars, including one that runs ear-to-chin from surgery to repair a broken jaw. Eggers avoids eye contact in public — he walks fast down streets and through stores staring at the ground, jaw clenched. ”I have bipolar disorder with psychotic tendencies,” he told me as he sucked down a green-apple smoothie. ”Homicidal feelings too.”



Eggers’s condition has landed him in court several times: a disturbing-the-peace charge for pouring scalding coffee onto a man under his apartment window who annoyed him; oneyear probation for threatening to kill the archbishop of St. Louis because of news reports about church money and molestations by priests in other cities (which the archbishop had nothing to do with). In describing his condition, Eggers says it’s like when the Incredible Hulk changes from man to monster. His vision blurs, his body tingles and he can barely hear. According to his friend Larry Gower, who often serves as a public liaison for him, in those moments, Eggers gets extremely loud. They both agree that Sadie is one of the few things keeping Eggers from snapping.



Sadie rides around town on Eggers’s back in a bright purple backpack specially designed to hold her cage. When he gets upset, she talks him down, saying: ”It’s O.K., Jim. Calm down, Jim. You’re all right, Jim. I’m here, Jim.” She somehow senses when he is getting agitated before he even knows it’s happening. ”I still go off on people sometimes, but she makes sure it never escalates into a big problem,” he told me, grinning bashfully at Sadie. ”Now when people make me mad I just give them the bird,” he said, pulling up his sleeve and flexing his biceps, which is covered with a large tattoo of Sadie.



Soon after what he calls ”the Archbishop Incident,” Eggers got Sadie from a friend who owned a pet store. She’d been neglected by a previous owner and had torn out all her feathers, so Eggers nursed her back to health. He didn’t initially train her as a service animal, he says; she did that herself. When Eggers had episodes at home, he’d pace, holding his head and yelling: ”It’s O.K., Jim! You’re all right, Jim! Calm down, Jim!” One day, Sadie

started doing it, too. He soon realized that she calmed him better than he calmed himself. So he started rewarding her each time it happened. And he has had only one incident since: he dented a woman’s car with his fist on a day when he’d left Sadie at home.



Eggers didn’t think to use any special language to describe Sadie until he tried to take her on a bus and the driver said that only ”service animals” were allowed. Eggers went home and looked up ”service animal” online. ”That’s when it all fell into place,” he told me. He learned that psychiatric service animals help their owners cope with things like medication side effects. Eggers takes heavy doses of antipsychotics that leave him in a fog most of the day. So he trained Sadie to alert him with a loud ringing noise if someone calls, or to yell ”WHO’S THERE?” when anyone knocks on the door. If the fire alarm goes off, Sadie goes off. If Eggers leaves the faucet running, Sadie makes sounds like a waterfall until he turns it off.



Eggers got a service-animal bus pass for Sadie and began taking her everywhere. (He has special insulated cage panels to keep her warm in winter.) For years, few people objected. Then, in the spring of 2007, Eggers went to have his teeth cleaned at the St. Louis , Community College dental-hygiene school, and officials there told him that Sadie wasn’t allowed inside because she posed a risk to public health and wasn’t really a service animal. ”All I can say is, they were lucky I had Sadie with me to keep me calm when they said that,” Eggers told me.



He filed a complaint with the United States Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights (O.C.R.), which initiated an investigation. Its conclusion: the school wrongfully denied access based on public-health concerns without assessing whether Sadie actually posed a risk. (Several top epidemiologists I interviewed for this article said that, on the whole, birds and miniature horses pose no more risk to human health than service dogs do.)



But Eggers is still fighting that fight. According to the O.C.R., the school ”exceeded the boundaries of a permissible inquiry” by questioning Eggers about his disability. But that didn’t change the school’s conclusion: it labeled Sadie a mere ”therapy animal.” If that label sticks, it will mean that Sadie isn’t covered by the federal law that protects service animals and guarantees them access to public places.



Stories like Eggers’s involve two questions that are often mistakenly treated as one. The first: What qualifies as a service animal? The second: Can any species be eligible? ,,



There are two categories of animals that help people. ”Therapy animals” (also known as ”comfort animals”) have been used for decades in hospitals and homes for the elderly or disabled. Their job is essentially to be themselves — to let humans pet and play with them, which calms people, lowers their blood pressure and makes them feel better. There are also therapy horses, which people ride to help with balance and muscle building.



These animals are valuable, but they have no special legal rights because they aren’t considered service animals, the second category, which the A.D.A. defines as ”any guide dog, signal dog or other animal individually trained to do work or perform tasks for the benefit of an individual with a disability, including, but not limited to, guiding individuals with impaired vision, alerting individuals with impaired hearing to intruders or sounds, providing minimal protection or rescue work, pulling a wheelchair or fetching dropped items.”



Since the 1920s, when guide dogs first started working with blind World War I veterans, service animals have been trained to do everything from helping people balance on stairs to opening doors to calling 911. In the early ’80s, small capuchin monkeys started helping quadriplegics with basic day-to-day functions like eating and drinking, and there was no question about whether they counted as service animals. Things got more complicated in the ’90s, when ”psychiatric service animals” started fetching pills and water, alerting owners to panic attacks and helping autistic children socialize.



The line between therapy animals and psychiatric service animals has always been blurry, because it usually comes down to varying definitions of the words ”task” and ”work” and whether something like actively soothing a person qualifies. That line got blurrier in 2003, when the Department of Transportation revised its internal policies regarding service animals on airplanes. It issued a statement saying that in recent years, ”a wider variety of animals (e.g., cats, monkeys, etc.) have been individually trained to assist people with disabilities. Service animals also perform a much wider variety of functions than ever before.”



To keep up with these changes, the D.O.T.’s new guidelines said, ”Animals that assist persons with disabilities by providing emotional support qualify as service animals.” They also said that any species could qualify and that these animals didn’t need special training, aside from basic obedience. The only thing required for a pet to fly with its owner instead of riding as cargo was documentation (like a letter from a doctor) saying the person needed emotional support from an animal. Legally speaking, the D.O.T.’s new policy applied only to airplanes — the A.D.A.’s definition of service animal stayed the same. But for those looking online to find out whether they could take their animals into stores and restaurants, the D.O.T.’s definition looked like official law, and people started acting accordingly.



Soon, a trend emerged: people with no visible disabilities were bringing what a New York Times article called ”a veritable Noah’s Ark of support animals” into businesses, claiming that they were service animals. Business owners and their employees often couldn’t distinguish the genuine from the bogus. To protect the disabled from intrusive questions about their medical histories, the A.D.A. makes it illegal to ask what disorder an animal helps with. You also can’t ask for proof that a person is disabled or a demonstration of an animal’s ”tasks.” There is no certification process for service animals (though there are Web sites where anyone can buy an official-looking card that says they have a certified service animal, no documentation required). The only questions businesses can ask are ”Is that a trained service animal?” and ”What task is it trained to do?”



If the person answers yes to the first and claims that the animal is, say, trained to alert him or her to a specific condition (like a seizure), additional questioning could end in a lawsuit. And in many cases, according to Joan Esnayra, founder of the Psychiatric Service Dog Society, the outcome of those lawsuits depends largely on the words people use to describe their animals. ”If you say ’comfort,’ ’need’ or ’emotional support,’ you’re out the door,” she says. ”If you talk about what your animal does in terms of ’tasks’ and ’work,’ then you stand a chance.”



Case in point: When the dental school questioned Eggers about whether Sadie was a service animal, he said she kept him ”calm.” If he had said that she alerts him to things like attacks and doorbells, his case might have been stronger. ;. ;



According to Jennifer Mathis, an attorney at the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, ”A lot of times when people with legitimate service animals lose these cases, it has to do with the fact that they don’t explain their service animals well.”



Rather than risk a lawsuit, many business owners simply allow the animals, even if they doubt their legitimacy. Then they complain to the Department of Justice that the A.D.A. is too broad in its definition of ”service animal,” and too restrictive of businesses trying to protect themselves from people who fake it. Which many people do.



In October, a man in Portland, Ore., took his dog on a bus, claiming that it was a service animal. While getting off the bus, the dog killed another dog that was riding as a ”comfort animal.” (In Portland, comfort animals are allowed on public transportation.) A few days later, an editorial appeared in The Oregonian with the headline ”Take the Menagerie Off the Bus.” It opened with: ”No offense, ferret lovers.... Your pet... may offer emotional support. But it shouldn’t be roaming the aisles of a ... bus or train.” It argued that the story of the dead comfort dog was proof that people had stretched the legal definition of service animals to include a virtual zoo of animals.



Lex Frieden, a professor of health-information science at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston and a former director of the National Council on Disability, sees the issue differently. ”People shouldn’t be able to carry their pets on a plane or into a restaurant claiming they’re service animals when they’re not,” he says. ”But that has nothing to do with what species a service animal is.” The appropriate response in those situations isn’t a species ban, he says, but rather strict punishments for people who pose as disabled. ”It’s fraud,” he points out, ”and it results in increased scrutiny of people with legitimate disabilities.”



In June, in an effort to clarify the confusion surrounding service animals, the Department of Justice proposed new regulations to explicitly include psychiatric service and exclude comfort animals. This was part of a sweeping revision of the A.D.A. intended to increase protection and access for the disabled, which was widely applauded. But tucked into that proposal were a few lines that worry advocates and people with disabilities: the D.O. J. proposed limiting service animals to a ”dog or other common domestic animal,” specifically excluding ”wild animals (including nonhuman primates born in captivity), reptiles, rabbits, farm animals (including any breed of horse, miniature horse, pony, pig or goat), ferrets, amphibians and rodents.”



This summer, the D.O.J. held a public hearing in Washington and invited anyone who would be affected by the proposed changes to argue for or against them. Many pleaded their cases in person, others by letter. The arguments in favor of species restrictions came primarily from businesses concerned about having to alter facilities, rebuilding seating areas, say, to make room for miniature horses. Several service-animal organizations and people with disabilities argued that banning reptiles and insects was fine but that excluding miniature horses and primates simply went too far. In their defense, they cited things like dog allergies, the long life spans of several species and monkeys’ opposable thumbs. After considering the arguments, last month the D.O.J. submitted a final proposal to the Office of Management and Budget. Until there’s a ruling, neither office will comment on the issue or say whether the species restriction was removed or revised after the public hearings.



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.



On a rainy day in November, I walked through a T. J. Maxx store in Springfield, Mo., with Debby Rose and Richard, her 25-pound bonnet macaque monkey — one of the most controversial service animals working today. Rose was wearing brown pants and a brownand-gold-patterned shirt. Richard was wearing a brown long-sleeved polo over a white Tshirt with jeans and a tan vest that said ”Please Don’t Pet Me I’m Working.” Richard stood in the child seat of Rose’s shopping cart, facing forward, bouncing up and down, smacking his lips and grinning as Rose pushed him down the aisles.



Richard is a hands-on shopper. If Rose pointed at a sweater or purse she liked, or a pair of shoes, his hand darted out to touch them. As we passed a pair of tan, fuzzy winter boots that Rose particularly liked, Richard leaned out of the cart and quickly licked one on its toe. ’



People stared as we walked. ”Why do you have him?” they’d ask.



”He’s a service animal trained for my disability, kind of like a seizure-alert dog,” Rose told them, again and again., ,,



”Can I pet him?”



”He doesn’t like to be touched,” she’d say, ”but you can give him five.”



People raised their hands, and Richard gave them five.



That Rose isn’t bothered by people looking and asking questions is impressive, considering that she has agoraphobia and severe anxiety disorder with debilitating panic attacks. Until getting Richard four years ago, she required heavy doses of anti-anxiety drugs just to go out in public. ”I couldn’t have come in this store before Richard, let alone handled all these people talking to me,” she said. ”Now I like it.”



Rose adopted Richard in 2004; he was badly neglected and near death. She and two of her six children — whom she raised as a single mother — run an exotic-animal shelter. Rose says she believes that Richard was trained as a service animal for his previous owner, an elderly woman whose son gave Richard away when she died. He had been neutered, and his tail had been surgically removed. He’d also had his large and potentially dangerous canine teeth pulled, a procedure commonly done with service monkeys for safety (and often cited as one of several ethical concerns with using wild instead of domesticated species for such jobs).



As Richard returned to health, Rose realized that he had begun to recognize her panic attacks before she did. Her doctor suggested that she train him to help with her disorder, then wrote a letter approving of him as a service animal, saying that Richard was ”a constructive way to avoid use of unnecessary medications.” Rose took that letter to the Springfield-Greene County Health Department, got permission for Richard to accompany her in public and has been drug-free ever since. She ordered a service-animal ID certificate online; she even got a restriction on her driver’s license saying that she can’t operate a car without a monkey present. Now he sits in her lap with a hand on the wheel while she drives, and she never leaves home without him.



But the number of places Rose and Richard can go is decreasing. In September 2006, after receiving complaints that Richard was sitting in highchairs in restaurants, touching silverware and going through a buffet line with Rose, the Health Department sent a letter to all local restaurants announcing that Richard was a risk to public health and not a legitimate service animal. It instructed businesses to refuse him access and to call the police if Rose protested. Businesses posted the letter on their doors and in their bathrooms; soon Cox College of Nursing and Health Sciences, where Rose was attending nursing school, refused Richard access, too. Stories started appearing about Rose and her monkey in the newspaper and on TV. ”Suddenly,” she told me, ”everyone knew I had a mental disorder.”



Rose dropped out of school and filed a lawsuit against her local Health Department, the nursing school, Wal-Mart and several other local businesses that had forbidden Richard access, saying that they violated the A.D.A. Kevin Gipson, director of the local Health Department, told me that he had asked Rose to show him what ”tasks” Richard performed that would qualify him. ”She couldn’t,” he said.



Defining ”task” is often a point of contention in these cases, especially with psychiatric service animals, whose work generally can’t be demonstrated on command. Before going to T. J. Maxx, I saw Rose begin to panic while sitting in her lawyer’s office talking about her case. Her face flushed; her voice quivered. Richard, who had been dozing in the chair beside her, leapt onto her arm and began stroking her hair. He hugged her, rubbed her ear and cooed while she talked. She immediately calmed down. ”He snaps me out of it before the attacks happen,” she said. ”If they start at night, he’ll turn on the light and get me a bottle of water.”



For Gipson, that’s really beside the point. ”Even if Richard is a legitimate service animal,” he told me, ”if he poses a public-health risk, the A.D.A. says he can be excluded. And we believe primates pose a significant health risk.”



Rose says that Richard is perfectly safe and immaculately clean. She showers and blow-dries him every day and uses hand sanitizer on him regularly, and he always wears diapers. But that doesn’t impress the Health Department. Monkeys can carry viruses, like herpes B, which are essentially harmless to them but usually deadly to humans. Those viruses can be transmitted through saliva and other bodily fluids. In 1998, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published a study titled ”B-Viruses From Pet Macaque Monkeys: An Emerging Threat in the United States?” saying that 80 to 90 percent of adult macaques like Richard carry herpes B. It’s possible to test them for viruses, which Rose does every year with Richard, but those tests often give false negatives. Plus, Gipson told me, ”he could catch it any time from contact with other monkeys, which we know he’s had.” Five days before the Health Department banned Richard, a local newspaper ran pictures of him and several other monkeys hanging out at Rose’s family’s sanctuary.



According to Frederick Murphy, former head of viral pathology for the C.D.C. and codiscoverer of the Ebola virus, the threat that viruses from service monkeys present to humans is essentially unknown. There have been a few cases of primate-lab workers contracting herpes B from macaques — mostly from being bitten — but no cases of people being infected by service monkeys, which are usually capuchins.



The bigger concern, according to several experts, is potential aggression. ”People think monkeys are cute and like humans, but they’re not,” says Laura Kahn, a public-health expert at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton. ”They’re wild animals, and they’re dangerous.”



Critics of noncanine service animals tend to focus on disease perhaps because that’s the only way to legally exclude any service animal under the current A.D.A. But on the whole, Bradford Smith, former director of the University of California Davis Veterinary Medical Teaching Hospital, says, ”I would tend to think the disease argument is really a proxy for other concerns, like having to let any person who says their parrot or horse is a service animal enter into public areas.”



Rose’s case is sometimes held up as an example of why the A.D.A. should be rewritten to exclude primates as service animals. But in fact, Frieden says, it’s an example of how the original A.D.A. works well as it was written, since it allows broad use of service animals while still leaving room to protect the public health. ”Some situations have to be dealt with on a case-by-case basis,” he says. ”You can’t legislate fine lines — that’s just not a functional law.”



Frieden is very clear about his belief that it would be a huge loss if concerns about specific cases jeopardized the use of all noncanine service animals, especially the capuchin monkeys trained to help quadriplegics. The capuchins attend ”monkey college” at Helping Hands, a nonprofit organization in Boston, where they fetch remote controls, put food in microwaves, open containers, vacuum floors and flip light switches, all in exchange for treats. Helping Hands capuchins are captive bred, which minimizes the risk of picking up diseases, and they’re provided specifically for in-home use. The proposed species restriction might make it impossible for people to transport capuchins or keep them in their homes because of zoning restrictions. The thought of this makes Helping Hands’s founder, M. J. Willard, shudder. ”There ought to be a more nuanced way if somebody just thinks it through,” she says. ”Even just minor requirements of verifying the legitimacy of a service animal would solve a lot of the current problem.”



Frieden agrees. He suggests that perhaps a national committee could be appointed to develop certification standards for all service animals as well as a formal process for preventing and punishing service-animal fraud. Doing so might solve part of the controversy, he says. But not all of it. Particularly when it comes to species questions.



”Many people try to make this issue black and white — this service animal is good; that one is bad — but that’s not possible, because disability extends through an enormous realm of human behavior and anatomy and human condition,” Frieden told me. In the end, according to him, the important thing to remember is this: ”The public used to be put off by the very sight of a person with a disability. That state of mind delayed productivity and caused irreparable harm to many people for decades. We’ve now said, by law, that regardless of their disability, people must have equal opportunity, and we can’t discriminate. In order to seek the opportunities and benefits they have as citizens, if a person needs a cane, they should be able to use one. If they need a wheelchair, a dog, a miniature horse or any other device or animal, society has to accept that, because those things are, in fact, part of that person.”



Rebecca Skloot teaches nonfiction at the University of Memphis. Her first book, ”The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks,” will be published by Crown in spring 2010.



....... , Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

proposed guidelines for service animals

Greetings. The following note was sent to several guide dog related email lists and is posted here for your convenience and information. Links are provided where appropriate. Please consider submitting your comments on the following proposed changes. Enjoy.

***
New ADA Service Animal Definition Proposed in USA

Deadline for Public Comments: August 18, 2008!

Dear Friends,

You can make a difference! The Department of Justice (DOJ) has just
released a Notice of Proposed Rule Making (NPRM) having major implications
for those of us working with guide, hearing and service dogs. Your
comments and opinions need to be heard by DOJ before it finalizes the new
and expanded definition of service animal.

IAADP has sent its comments on several issues to DOJ and that document
follows this letter. It's important for you to respond to DOJ's
recommendations since our future access rights depend on the federal
government's rules implementing the Americans with Disabilities Act.

In DOJ's new definition of service animal, input is requested on three
major issues. These are the possibility of setting a size and weight
limit on service animals, retaining the phrase minimal protection in the
new definition and excluding a wide variety of species.

IAADP has responded as an organization, but your personal letters will
cary great weight. IAADP opposes any size and weight limitations on
service animals, requests eliminating the minimal protection phrase and
recommends the same behavior and training standards developed for
assistance dogs apply to all service animals. These positions are
detailed in the enclosed

In order for your voice to be heard, please write your own opinion piece
and follow the directions for submission given below. The Department of
Justice has made it easy to submit your comment by e-mail.

Please join IAADP in this campaign. Your opinions need to be
heard! Thanks for your help.

Ed Eames, Ph.D., President

Please click on the following link in order to submit your opinion piece
to the Department of Justice:

http://www.regulations.gov/fdmspublic/component/main?main=SubmitComment&o=090000648062a604


International Association of Assistance Dog Partners
Ed Eames Ph.D., President

* 3376 North Wishon Ave. * Fresno, CA 93704 *

* (559) 224-0544 * (559) 224-5851 Fax *
http://www.iaadp.org/

eeames@csufresno.edu

* www.IAADP.org

Board of Directors:

Toni Eames, Tanya Eversole, Jill Exposito, Joan Froling, Wendy Morrell,
Devon Wilkins


IAADP's Public Comment on the Department of Justice 2008 NPRM
Re: Revision of the ADA Service Animal Definition
Docket ID: DOJ-CRT-2008-0015

The International Association of Assistance Dog Partners (IAADP) is a
cross-disability consumer advocacy organization with more than 2,000
members working with guide, hearing and service dogs. Its mission is to
foster the assistance dog movement through education, advocacy and peer
support.

We commend the Department of Justice for including in its revised proposed
definition of service animal a number of new and essential elements,
particularly emphasis on maintaining control of the service animal in
public settings and the requirement of housebreaking. As an organization
committed to fostering the assistance dog movement, IAADP appreciates the
Department of Justice's attempt to clarify the definition of service
animal for the general population, public accommodation representatives
and those working with service animals. However, IAADP believes certain
issues need further clarification before being established as final rules.

In response to the NPRM published in the Federal Register on June 17th,
IAADP, based on the rationale discussed below, encourages the Department
of Justice to:
* Eliminate the phrase "providing minimal protection" from the
definition of service animal;
* Eliminate the phrase "do work" from the definition because it is
redundant and the example of work given in the NPRM,
grounding, undermines the Department's goal of maintaining a clear
distinction between specially trained service animals and those animals
whose mere presence can provide emotional support, companionship or
therapeutic benefits.
* Limit the use of other species only to animals which can be trained
to meet the same standards for behavior and training that assistance dogs
must meet to qualify for public access.
* Avoid placing a size or weight limit on common domestic animals such
as assistance dogs.

According to the NPRM, widespread misinterpretation of the minimal
protection language has been a problem for the last 15 years. The DOJ
notes "Despite the Department's best efforts, the minimal protection
language appears to have been misinterpreted."

By continuing the use of this language, nothing will change.

Since the mission of the new rules is to clarify and avoid confusion,
maintenance of this phrase undermines this goal.

Minimal protection has been used by some trainers and disabled partners to
justify attack and aggression training for what are claimed to be service
animals. Although the Department does not agree with this interpretation,
continuing to use the minimal protection phrase does nothing to curtail
the idea that attack and aggressive behavior are acceptable tasks
performed by assistance dogs.

The justification for including minimal protection in the original
definition was to guarantee the rights of those with seizure disorders to
train their service dogs for seizure response and alert tasks. Since the
new definition proposed by the Department includes assisting an individual
during a seizure, the minimal protection language is redundant and not
needed.

Therefore, in response to Question Nine, IAADP believes that maintaining
the "providing minimal protection" clause is counterproductive to the goal
of the current NPRM.

IAADP applauds DOJ's categorical statement: "Animals whose sole function
is to provide emotional support, comfort, therapy, companionship,
therapeutic benefits, or to promote emotional well-being are not service
animals."

IAADP believes it is imperative to make it clear that individuals with
disabilities whose pets or companion animals have not been trained to
perform tasks directly related to their disability do not qualify as
service animals. These are usually referred to as emotional support or
comfort dogs when associated with a person with a psychiatric, cognitive
or mental disability. Since individuals with psychiatric disabilities
constitute the largest single category of Americans with disabilities, the
distinction between task training to mitigate the effects of an
individual’s disability on the one hand, and mere presence on the other
should be clear and consistently supported by the Department.

IAADP'S concern is with the section in the NPRM that reads:

"In contrast, the phrase 'do work' is slightly broader than ’perform
tasks', and adds meaning to the definition." By definition all work is
task defined thus to say "do work" is redundant and not needed.

Another concern is the example given of a psychiatric service dog helping
some individuals with dissociative identity disorder to remain grounded in
time or place. By including grounding as work performed by a psychiatric
service dog, the Department is providing the basis for an individual with
a psychiatric disability to claim the mere presence of a dog, which helps
ground him/her, meets the DOJ definition of a service animal.

This reference contradicts the strong and clear statement that emotional
support, companion or comfort animals do not meet the Department's
definition of a service animal. It also contradicts the basic premise that
a service animal performs a task to mitigate the effects of an
individual’s disability. If included, this section will continue to be a
source of confusion to the public, businesses and assistance dog
partners. IAADP believes the reference to grounding should be eliminated,
as well as the phrase "do work".

In response to Question Ten, IAADP commends the Department for recognizing
the concerns expressed by many of our constituents about the use of
reptiles and other species that cannot be reliably housebroken, task
trained or, which by their very nature, pose a threat to public
safety. Our goal is to promote the responsible use of access rights and
prevent the erosion of societal tolerance for service animal teams in
places of public accommodation.

In response to Question 11 concerning the size and weight of common
domestic animals, IAADP endorses the current Department policy. We
believe it is not the role of the government to limit disabled people's
choice of what would be an effective assistance dog for them.

The size of a common domestic animal like an assistance dog is a matter of
individual choice/necessity and may be related to the nature of the
disability. Limiting size and weight would discriminate against disabled
individuals who because of their height or weight and/or the severity of
their mobility impairment need to work with very large powerful assistance
dogs on strenuous tasks such as providing stability while walking, helping
transfer in and out of chairs, getting up after a fall or pulling a
wheelchair. IAADP recommends not placing limits on the size or weight of a
common domestic animal like an assistance dog.

With the incorporation of IAADP's recommendations in the new definitions,
we feel that the current confusion and misinterpretations will be greatly
mitigated to everyone's benefit.

Thank you for the opportunity to comment on the NPRM.

Ed Eames, Ph.D., President
International Association of Assistance Dog Partners


***
Excerpts from ADA Notice of Proposed Rulemaking

New Proposed Service Animal Definition

PART 36-NONDISCRIMINATIO
N ON THE BASIS OF DISABILITY BY PUBLIC
ACCOMMODATIONS AND IN COMMERCIAL FACILITIES

Subpart A-General

PROPOSED DEFINITION

Service animal means any dog or other common domestic animal individually
trained to do work or perform tasks for the benefit of an individual with
a disability, including, but not limited to, guiding individuals who are
blind or have low vision, alerting individuals who are deaf or hard of
hearing to the presence of people or sounds, providing minimal protection
or rescue work, pulling a wheelchair, fetching items, assisting an
individual during a seizure, retrieving medicine or the telephone,
providing physical support and assistance with balance and stability to
individuals with mobility disabilities, and assisting individuals,
including those with cognitive disabilities, with navigation. The term
service animal includes

Service animals.

The Department wishes to clarify the obligations of public accommodations
to accommodate individuals with disabilities who use service animals. The
Department continues to receive a large number of complaints from
individuals with service animals. It appears that many covered entities
are confused regarding their obligations under the ADA with regard to
individuals with disabilities who use service animals. At the same time,
some individuals with impairments-
-who would not be covered as individuals
with disabilities--are claiming that their animals are legitimate service
animals, whether fraudulently or sincerely (albeit mistakenly), to gain
access to hotels, restaurants, and other places of public accommodatio
Minimal protection.

In the Department’s ADA Business Brief on Service Animals,
which was published in 2002, the Department interpreted the minimal
protection language within the context of a seizure (i.e., alerting and
protecting a person who is having a seizure). Although the Department
received comments urging it to eliminate the minimal protection language,
the Department continues to believe that it should retain the "providing
minimal protection" language and interpret the language to exclude
so-called "attack dogs" that pose a direct threat to others.

Guidance on permissible service animals.

In the original regulation implementing title III, "service animal" was
defined as "any guide dog, signal dog, or other animal," and the
Department believed, at the time, that leaving the species selection up to
the discretion of the person with a disability was the best course of
action. Due to the proliferation of animals used by individuals,
including wild animals, the Department believes that this area needs some
parameters. Therefore, the Department is proposing to eliminate certain
species from coverage even if the other elements of the definition are
satisfied.

Comfort animals vs. psychiatric service animals.

Under the Department’s present regulatory language, some individuals and
entities have assumed that the requirement that service animals must be
individually trained to do work or perform tasks excluded all individuals
with mental disabilities from having service animals. Others have assumed
that any person with a psychiatric condition whose pet provided comfort to
them was covered by the ADA. The Department believes that psychiatric
service animals that are trained to do work or perform a task (e.g.,
reminding its owner to take medicine) for individuals whose disability is
covered by the ADA are protected by the Department’s present regulatory
approach.

Psychiatric service animals can be trained to perform a variety of tasks
that assist individuals with disabilities to detect the onset of
psychiatric episodes and ameliorate their effects. Tasks performed by
psychiatric service animals may include reminding the handler to take
medicine; providing safety checks, or room searches, or turning on lights
for persons with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder; interrupting
self-mutilation by persons with dissociative identity disorders; and
keeping disoriented individuals from danger.

The Department is proposing new regulatory text in § 36.104 to formalize
its position on emotional support/comfort animals, which is that
"[a]nimals whose sole function is to provide emotional support, comfort,
therapy, companionship, therapeutic benefits, or promote emotional
well-being are not service animals." The Department wishes to state,
however, that the exclusion of emotional support animals from ADA coverage
does not mean that individuals with psychiatric, cognitive, or mental
disabilities cannot use service animals. The Department proposes specific
regulatory text in § 36.104 to make this clear: "The term service animal
includes individually trained animals that do work or perform tasks for
the benefit of individuals with disabilities, including psychiatric,
cognitive, and mental disabilities." This language simply clarifies the
Departmen

The Department’s rule is based on the assumption that the title II and
title III regulations govern a wider range of public settings than the
settings that allow for emotional support animals. The Department
recognizes, however, that there are situations not governed exclusively by
the title II and title III regulations, particularly in the context of
residential settings and employment, where there may be compelling reasons
to permit the use of animals whose presence provides emotional support to
a person with a disability. Accordingly, other federal agency regulations
governing those situations may appropriately provide for increased access
for animals other than service animals.

Modification in policies, practices, or procedures.

The preamble to § 36.302 of the current title III regulation states that
the regulatory language was intended to provide the "broadest feasible
access" to individuals with service animals while acknowledging that, in
rare circumstances, accommodating service animals may not be required if
it would result in a fundamental alteration of the nature of the goods or
services the public accommodation provides or the safe operation of the
public accommodation. 56 FR 35544, 35565 (July 26, 1991). In order to
clarify this provision, the Department is incorporating into the proposed
regulation guidance that it has provided previously through technical
assistance.

Proposed training standards.

The Department has always required that service animals be individually
trained to do work or perform tasks for the benefit of an individual with
a disability, but has never imposed any type of formal training
requirements or certification process. While some groups have urged the
Department to modify this position, the Department does not believe such a
modification would serve the array of individuals with disabilities who
use service animals.

Detailed regulatory text changes and the Department’s response to public
comments on these issues and others are discussed below in the definition
section, § 36.104, and the section on modifications in policies,
practices, and procedures, § 36.302(c).

Section 36.302 Modifications in policies, practices, or procedures

Section 36.302(c) Service animals

The Department’s regulation now states that "[g]enerally, a public
accommodation shall modify policies, practices, or procedures to permit
the use of a service animal by an individual with a disability." 28 CFR
36.302(c)(1). In general, the Department is proposing to retain the scope
of the current regulation while clarifying its longstanding policies and
interpretations.

The Department is proposing to revise § 36.302(c) by adding the following
sections as exceptions to the general rule on access. Proposed § 36.302
would:

* Expressly incorporate the Department’s policy interpretations as
outlined in published technical assistance Commonly Asked Questions about
Service Animals (1996)
(http://www.ada.gov/qasrvc.htm
) and ADA
Business Brief: Service Animals (2002)
(http://www.ada.gov/svcanimb.htm
) and
add that a public accommodation may ask an individual with a disability
to remove a service animal from the premises if: (1) the animal is out
of control and the animal’s owner does not take effective action to
control it; (2) the animal is not housebroken or the animal’s presence or
behavior fundamentally alters the nature of the service the public
accommodation provides (e.g., repeated barking during a live
performance); or (3) the animal poses a direct threat to the heal
* Add that if a place of public accommodation properly excludes a
service animal, the public accommodation must give the individual with a
disability the opportunity to obtain goods, services, or accommodations
without having the service animal on the premises;
* Add requirements that the work or tasks performed by a service
animal must be directly related to the handler’s disability; that a
service animal that accompanies an individual with a disability into a
place of public accommodation must be individually trained to do work or
perform a task, be housebroken, and be under the control of its owner;
and that a service animal must have a harness, leash, or other tether;
* Modify the language in § 36.302(c)(2), which currently states,
"[n]othing in this part requires a public accommodation to supervise or
care for a service animal," to read, "[a] public accommodation is not
responsible for caring for or supervising a service animal," and relocate
this provision to proposed § 36.302(c)(5). (This proposed language does
not require that the person with a disability care for his or her service
animal if care can be provided by a family member, friend, attendant,
volunteer, or anyone acting on behalf of the person with a disability.);
* Expressly incorporate the Department’s policy interpretations as
outlined in published technical assistance Commonly Asked Questions about
Service Animals
(1996) (
http://www.ada.gov/qasrvc.htm
)
and ADA Business Brief: Service Animals
(2002)
(http://www.ada.gov/svcanimb.htm
) that a
public accommodation must not ask about the nature or extent of a
person’s disability, nor require proof of service animal certification or
licensing, but that a public accommodation may ask: (i) if the animal is
required because of a disability; and (ii) what work or tasks the animal
has been trained to perform;
* Add that individuals with disabilities who are accompanied by
service animals may access all areas of a public accommodation where
members of the public are allowed to go; and
* Expressly incorporate the Department’s policy interpretations as
outlined in published technical assistance Commonly Asked Questions about
Service Animals
(1996) (
http://www.ada.gov/qasrvc.htm
)
and ADA Business Brief: Service Animals
(2002)
(
http://www.ada.gov/svcanimb.htm
) and
add that a public accommodation must not require an individual with a
disability to pay a fee or surcharge, post a deposit, or comply with
requirements not generally applicable to other patrons as a condition of
permitting a service animal to accompany its handler in a place of public
accommodation, even if such deposits are required for pets, and that if a
public accommodation normally charges its clients or customers for damage
that they cause, a customer with a disability may

These changes will respond to the following concerns raised by individuals
and organizations that commented in response to the ANPRM.


Proposed behavior or training standards.

Some commenters proposed behavior or training standards for the Department
to adopt in its revised regulation, not only to remain in keeping with the
requirement for individual training, but also on the basis that without
training standards the public has no way to differentiate between
untrained pets and service animals. Because of the variety of individual
training that a service animal can receive--from formal licensing at an
academy to individual training on how to respond to the onset of medical
conditions, such as seizures--the Department is not inclined to establish
a standard that all service animals must meet. While the Department does
not plan to change the current policy of no formal training or certifi
Hospital and healthcare settings.

Public accommodations, including hospitals, must modify policies,
practices, or procedures to permit the use of a service animal by an
individual with a disability. 28 CFR 36.302(c)(1). The exception to this
requirement is if making the modification would fundamentally alter the
nature of the goods, services, facilities, privileges, advantages, or
accommodations. Id. at 36.302(a). The Department generally follows the
guidance of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on the
use of service animals in a hospital setting.

As required by the ADA, a healthcare facility must permit a person with a
disability to be accompanied by his or her service animal in all areas of
the facility in which that person would otherwise be allowed, with some
exceptions. Zoonotic diseases can be transmitted to humans through trauma
(bites, scratches, direct contact, arthropod vectors, or
aerosols). Although there is no evidence that most service animals pose a
significant risk of transmitting infectious agents to humans, animals can
serve as a reservoir for a significant number of diseases that could
potentially be transmitted to humans in the healthcare setting. A service
animal may accompany its owner to such areas as admissions and discharge
offices, the emergency room, inpatient and outpatient rooms, examining and
diagnostic rooms, clinics, rehabilitation therapy areas, the cafeteria and
vending area

Under the ADA, the only circumstances under which a person with a
disability may not be entitled to be accompanied by his or her service
animal are those rare circumstances in which it has been determined that
the animal poses a direct threat to the health or safety of others. A
direct threat is defined as a significant risk to the health or safety of
others that cannot be eliminated or mitigated by a modification of
polices, practices, or procedures. Based on CDC guidance, it is generally
appropriate to exclude a service animal from areas that require a
protected environment, including operating rooms, holding and recovery
areas, labor and delivery suites, newborn intensive care nurseries, and
sterile processing departments. See Centers for Disease Control,
Guidelines for Environmental Infection Control in Health-Care
Facilities: Recommendations of CDC and t


NOTE from Joan about this separate section:

QUESTIONS The DOJ is asking the public to comment on, will follow the
explanations given.

"Service animal"

The Department is proposing to amend the definition of "service animal" in
§ 36.104 of the current regulation, which is defined as, "any guide dog,
signal dog, or other animal individually trained to do work or perform
tasks for the benefit of an individual with a disability, including, but
not limited to, guiding individuals with impaired vision, alerting
individuals with impaired hearing to intruders or sounds, providing
minimal protection or rescue work, pulling a wheelchair, or fetching
dropped items." Proposed § 36.104 would:

* Remove "guide" or "signal" as descriptions of types of service dogs
and add "other common domestic" animal to the Department’s current
definition;
* Remove "individuals with impaired vision" and replace it with
"individuals who are blind or have low vision";
* Change "individuals with hearing impairments" to "individuals who
are deaf or hard of hearing";
* Replace the term "intruders" with the phrase "the presence of
people" in the section on alerting individuals who are deaf or hard of
hearing;
* Add the following to the list of work and task examples: assisting
an individual during a seizure, retrieving medicine or the telephone,
providing physical support to assist with balance and stability to
individuals with mobility disabilities, and assisting individuals,
including those with cognitive disabilities, with navigation;
* Add that "service animal" includes individually trained animals that
do work or perform tasks for the benefit of individuals with
disabilities, including psychiatric, cognitive, or mental disabilities;
* Add that "service animal" does not include wild animals (including
nonhuman primates born in captivity), reptiles, rabbits, farm animals
(including horses, miniature horses, ponies, pigs, and goats), ferrets,
amphibians, and rodents; and
* Add that animals whose sole function is to provide emotional
support, comfort, therapy, companionship, therapeutic benefits, or
promote emotional well-being are not "service animals."

The Department is proposing these changes in response to concerns
expressed by commenters who responded to the Department’s ANPRM. Issues
raised by the commenters include:

"Minimal protection."

There were many comments by service dog users urging the Department to
remove from the definition "providing minimal protection." The commenters
set forth the following reasons: (1) the current phrase can be
interpreted to allow "protection dogs" that are trained to be aggressive
and to provide protection to be covered under the ADA, so long as they are
paired with a person with a disability; and (2) since some view the
minimal protection language to mean that a dog’s very presence can act as
a crime deterrent, the language allows any untrained pet dog to provide
this minimal protection by its mere presence. These interpretations were
not contemplated by the ADA or the title III regulation.

In the Department’s ADA Business Brief on Service Animals, which was
published in 2002, the Department interpreted the minimal protection
language within the context of a seizure (i.e., alerting and protecting a
person who is having a seizure). Despite the Department’s best efforts,
the minimal protection language appears to have been
misinterpreted. Nonetheless, the Department continues to believe that it
should retain the "providing minimal protection" language and interpret
the language to exclude so-called "attack dogs" that pose a direct threat
to others.

Question 9: Should the Department clarify the phrase "providing minimal
protection" in the definition or remove it?

"Alerting to intruders."

Some commenters argued that the phrase "alerting to intruders" in the
current text has been misinterpreted by some people to apply to a special
line of protection dogs that are trained to be aggressive. People have
asserted, incorrectly, that use of such animals is protected under the
ADA. The Department reiterates that public accommodations are not required
to admit any animal that poses a direct threat to the health or safety of
others. The Department has proposed removing "intruders" and replacing it
with "the presence of people."

"Task" emphasis.

Many commenters followed the lead of an umbrella service dog organization
in suggesting that "performing tasks" should form the basis of the service
animal definition, that "do work" should be eliminated from the
definition, and that "physical" should be added to describe tasks. Tasks
by their nature are physical, so the Department does not believe that such
a change is warranted. In contrast, the phrase "do work" is slightly
broader than "perform tasks," and adds meaning to the definition. For
example, a psychiatric service dog can help some individuals with
dissociative identity disorder to remain grounded in time or place. As
one service dog user stated, in some cases "critical forms of assistance
can’t be construed as phys Define "task."

One commenter suggested defining the term "task," presumably so that there
would be a better understanding of what type of service performed by an
animal would qualify for coverage. The Department feels that the common
definition of task is sufficiently clear and that it is not necessary to
add to the definitions section. However, the Department has proposed
additional examples of work or tasks to help illustrate this requirement
in the definition.

Define "animal" or what qualifies certain species as "service animals."

When the regulations were promulgated in the early 1990s, the Department
did not define the parameters of acceptable animal species, and few
anticipated the variety of animals that would be used in the future,
ranging from pigs and miniature horses to snakes and iguanas. One
commenter suggested defining "animal" (in the context of service animals)
or the parameters of species to reduce the confusion over whether a
particular service animal is covered. One service dog organization
commented that other species would be acceptable if those animals could
meet the behavioral standards of trained service dogs. Other commenters
asserted that there are certain animals (e.g., reptiles) t

To establish a practical and reasonable species parameter, the Department
proposes to narrow the definition of acceptable animal species to "dog or
other common domestic animal" by excluding the following
animals: reptiles, rabbits, farm animals (including horses, miniature
horses, ponies, pigs, or goats), ferrets, amphibians, and rodents. Many
commenters asserted that limiting the number of allowable species would
help stop erosion of the public’s trust, which results in reduced access
for many individuals with disabilities, despite the fact that they use
trained service animals that adhere to high behavioral standards. The
Department is compelled to take into account practical considerations of
certain animals and contemplate their suitability in a variety of public
contexts, such as restaurants, grocery stores, and performing arts venues.

In addition, the Department believes that it is necessary to eliminate
from coverage all wild animals, whether born or bred in captivity or the
wild. Some animals, such as nonhuman primates, pose a direct threat to
safety based on behavior that can be aggressive and violent without notice
or provocation. The American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) issued
a position statement against the use of monkeys as service animals,
stating, "[t]he AVMA does not support the use of nonhuman primates as
assistance animals because of animal welfare concerns, the potential for
serious injury and zoonotic (animal to human disease transmission)
risks." See AVMA position statement, Nonhuman Primates as Assistance
Animals (2005), available at
http://www.avma.org/issues/pol

Although unusual species make up a very small percentage of service
animals as a collective group, their use has engendered broad public
debate and, therefore, the Department seeks comment on this issue.

Question 10: Should the Department eliminate certain species from the
definition of "service animal"? If so, please provide comment on the
Department’s use of the phrase "common domestic animal" and on its choice
of which types of animals to exclude.

Question 11: Should the Department impose a size or weight limitation for
common domestic animals, even if the animal satisfies the "common domestic
animal" prong of the proposed definition?

Comfort animals.

It is important to address the concept of comfort animals or emotional
support animals, which have become increasingly popular, primarily with
individuals with mental or psychiatric impairments, many of which do not
rise to the level of disability. Comfort animals are also used by
individuals without any type of impairment who claim the need for such
animals in order to bring their pets into places of public accommodation.

The difference between an emotional support animal and a legitimate
psychiatric service animal is the service that is provided (i.e., the
actual work or task performed by the service animal). Another critical
factor rests on the severity of the individual’s impairment. For example,
only individuals with conditions that substantially limit them in a major
life activity currently qualify for coverage under the ADA, and only those
individuals will qualify to use a service animal. See 42 U.S.C. 12102(2)
(defining disability); 28 CFR 36.104 (same). Major life activities
include functions such as caring for oneself, performing manual tasks,
walking, seeing, hearing, speaking, breathing, learning, and
working. Many Americans have some type of physical or mental impairment
(e.g., arthritis, anxiety, back pain, imperfect vision, etc.), but
establishing a p Change "service animal" to "assistance animal."

Some commenters asserted that "assistance animal" is a term of art and
should replace "service animal." While some agencies, like the Department
of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), use the term "assistance animal,"
that term is used to denote a broader category of animals than is covered
by the ADA. The Department believes that changing the term used under the
ADA would create confusion, particularly in view of the broader parameters
for coverage under the Fair Housing Act (FHA) cf., HUD Handbook No. 4350.3
Rev-1, Chg-2, Occupancy Requirements of Subsidized Multifamily Housing
Programs (June 2007), available at
http://www.hudclips.org

ANOTHER SECTION, DEFINING SPECIFICS


6. Amend § 36.302 as follows:

a. Revise paragraph (c)(2);

b. Add paragraphs (c)(3) through (c)(8) and paragraphs (e) and (f) to read
as follows:

§ 36.302 Modifications in policies, practices, or procedures.

* * * * *

(c)(2) Exceptions. A public accommodation may ask an individual with a
disability to remove a service animal from the premises if:

(i) The animal is out of control and the animal’s handler does not take
effective action to control it;

(ii) The animal is not housebroken or the animal’s presence or behavior
fundamentally alters the nature of the service the public accommodation
provides (e.g., repeated barking during a live performance); or

(iii) The animal poses a direct threat to the health or safety of others
that cannot be eliminated by reasonable modifications.

(3) If an animal is properly excluded. If a place of accommodation
properly excludes a service animal, it shall give the individual with a
disability the opportunity to obtain goods, services, and accommodations
without having the service animal on the premises.

(4) General requirements. The work or tasks performed by a service animal
shall be directly related to the handler’s disability. A service animal
that accompanies an individual with a disability into a place of public
accommodation shall be individually trained to do work or perform a task,
housebroken, and under the control of its handler. A service animal shall
have a harness, leash, or other tether.

(5) Care or supervision of service animals. A public accommodation is not
responsible for caring for or supervising a service animal.

(6) Inquiries. A public accommodation shall not ask about the nature or
extent of a person’s disability, but can determine whether an animal
qualifies as a service animal. For example, a public accommodation may ask
if the animal is required because of a disability; and what work or task
the animal has been trained to perform. A public accommodation shall not
require documentation, such as proof that the animal has been certified or
licensed as a service animal.

(7) Access to areas open to the public, program participants, and
invitees. Individuals with disabilities who are accompanied by service
animals may access all areas of a place of public accommodation where
members of the public, program participants, and invitees are allowed to
go.

(8) Fees or surcharges. A public accommodation shall not ask or require
an individual with a disability to post a deposit, pay a fee or surcharge,
or comply with other requirements not generally applicable to other
patrons as a condition of permitting a service animal to accompany its
handler in a place of public accommodation, even if people accompanied by
pets are required to do so. If a public accommodation normally charges
its clients or customers for damage that they cause, a customer with a
disability may be charged for damage caused by his or her service animal.

* * * * *

Please contact Ed Eames by email
at
eeames@csufresno.edu
with questions or comments.

Summary of the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act

Greetings. And finally, here's a plain language summary of the act that seeks to make on-screen information accessible to all. Enjoy.

Summary of the
"21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act"

Telecommunications technologies have a proven ability to empower
individuals with the necessary tools of the information age. These
technological tools can animate the personal use of communications
for work or enjoyment, but also impact health care delivery,
educational opportunities, the prospects for employment, and job
creation. The goal of the legislation is to establish new
safeguards for disability access to ensure that people with
disabilities are not left behind as technology changes and the
United States migrates to the next generation of Internet-based and
digital communication technologies.

Title I -Communications Access

Definitions. Section 101. -Adds definitions to the Act as follows:

Disability -This has the same meaning as in the Americans with
Disabilities Act and Section 255 of the Communications Act.
Interconnected VoIP Service -This definition has the same meaning
as in the FCC's regulations.

IP-enabled communication service -This definition encompasses
interconnected VolP service and includes transmission services that
have the purpose of conducting voice, text, or video conversations,
interactive voice response systems, and other similar
communication-based services.

Hearing Aid Compatibility. See. 102. -Extends federal law that
currently requires
hearing aid compatibility on newly manufactured and imported telephones, to
comparable customer premises equipment used to provide IP-enabled
communication
service. The purpose of this section is to make sure that people
with hearing loss have
access to telephone devices used with advanced technologies,
including cell phones or
any other handsets used for Internet-based voice communications.
(This section is not
intended to extend to headsets or headphones used with computers.)

Relay Services. Sec. 103. -This section clarifies that
telecommunications relay services (TRS) are intended to ensure that
people who have hearing or speech disabilities can use relay
services to engage in functionally equivalent telephone
communication with all other people, not just people without a
hearing or speech disability. It revises Section 225 of the Act,
which has been interpreted at times (by the FCC) to authorize only
relay services between people with disabilities and people without
disabilities. This section also expands the relay service
obligation to contribute to the Telecommunications Relay Services
Fund to all providers of IP-enabled communication services that
provide voice communication.

Access to Internet-Based Services and Equipment. Sec. 104. -This
section builds upon authority contained in Section 255 of the
Communications Act, which generally requires telecommunications
service providers, as well as interconnected VoIP providers and
manufacturers, to make their services and equipment accessible to
and usable by
people with disabilities. This section creates new safeguards for
Internet-based communications technologies (equipment, services and
networks) to be accessible by people with disabilities, unless
doing so would result in an undue burden. Where an undue burden
would result, manufacturers and providers must make their equipment
and services compatible with specialized equipment and services
typically used by people with disabilities. The term "undue burden"
has the same meaning given it in the Americans with Disabilities Act.

This section also contains measures to improve the accountability
and enforcement of disability safeguards under Section 255 and the
new Section 255A, including directives for new FCC complaint
procedures, reporting obligations for industry and the FCC, the
creation of a clearinghouse of information on accessible products
and services by the U.S. Access Board and National
Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), and
directives for enhanced outreach and education by the FCC and NTIA.


Sec. 104 also clarifies that the transmission and receipt of text
messages sent by radio to and from mobile wireless devices are
telecommunications services, and therefore must comply with the
accessibility obligations under Section 255 and the new
accountability measures under Section 255B.

Universal Service. Sec. 105. -This section makes consumers with
disabilities - as a distinct group - eligible to receive universal
service support through two specific measures. First, it grants the
FCC authority to designate broadband services needed for "phone
communication" by people with disabilities as services eligible to
receive support under the existing Lifeline and Linkup universal
service programs. For example, this would include deaf individuals
who are otherwise eligible for Lifeline and Linkup support, but who
rely on Internet-based video relay services or point-to-point video
for their telephone communications. Second, it grants authority to
the FCC to designate programs that distribute specialized equipment
used to make telecommunications and Internet-enabled communication
services accessible to individuals who are deaf-blind, as eligible
for universal service support. Such support, however, is capped at
$10 million per year.

Emergency Access and Real-Time Text Support. Section 106. This
section contains a specific requirement for real-time text support,
to ensure that people with disabilities, especially individuals who
are deaf or hard of hearing or who have a speech disability, are
able to communicate with others via text in an IP environment with
the same reliability and interoperability as they receive via the
public telephone network when using TTYs. A primary goal of this
section is to ensure that individuals who rely on text to
communicate have equal access to emergency services during and
after the migration to a national IP-enabled emergency network.

Title II -Video Programming

Commission Inquiry on Closed-Captioning Decoder and Video Description
Capability, User Interfaces, and Video Programming Guides and
Menus. Sec. 201. - This section directs the FCC to conduct three
inquiries within 6 months of passage of the Act, and to report to
Congress on the results of such inquiries within 1 year: (I) to
identify formats and software needed to transmit, receive and
display closed captioning and video programming provided via
Internet-enabled services and digital wireless services, including
ways to transmit televised emergency information that is accessible
to people who are blind or visually impaired; and (2) to identify
ways to make user interfaces (controls -e.g., turning these devices
on and off, controlling volume and selecting programming) on
television and other video programming devices -including the
receipt, display, navigation and selection of programming
-accessible to people who are blind or visually impaired, and (3)
to identify ways to make video programming guides and menus
(typically on-screen) accessible in real-time to people who cannot
read those guides or menus.

Closed-Captioning Decoder and Video Description Capability. Sec. 202 -This
section expands the scope of devices that must display closed
captions under the
Television Decoder Circuitry Act of 1990 from the present
requirement of television sets
with screens that are 13 inches or larger, to all video devices
that receive or display video
programming transmitted simultaneously with sound, including those
that can receive or
display programming carried over the Internet. The section also
requires these devices to
be able to transmit and deliver video descriptions. Video
description is the provision of
verbal descriptions of the on-screen visual elements of a show
provided during natural pauses in dialogue.

Video Description and Closed Captioning. Sec. 203. -This section
reinstates the FCC's modest regulations on video description. Those
rules, originally promulgated in 2001, were struck down by a U.S.
Court of Appeals for lack of FCC authority. This section also
authorizes the FCC to promulgate additional rules to (1) ensure
that video description services can be transmitted and provided
over digital TV technologies, (2) require non-visual access to
on-screen emergency warnings and similar televised information and
(3) increase the amount of video description required. Finally,
this section adds a definition for video programming to include
programming distributed over the Internet to make clear that the
existing closed captioning obligations (and future video
description obligations) contained in Section 713 apply to video
programming that is distributed or re-distributed over the Internet.
It tasks the FCC with creating captioning rules for three types of
programming: 1) pre-produced programming that was previously
captioned for television viewing, 2) live video programming, and 3)
programming (first published or exhibited after the effective date of
the FCC's regulations) provided by or generally considered to be
comparable to programming provided by multichannel programming
distributors. This section is intended to ensure the continued
accessibility of video programming to Americans with disabilities,
as this programming migrates to the Internet

User Interfaces. Sec. 204.-This section requires devices used to
receive or display video programming, including devices used to
receive and display Internet-based video programming, to be
accessible by people with disabilities so that such individuals are
able to access all functions of such devices related to video
programming (such as turning these devices on and off, controlling
volume and select programming). The section contains requirements
for (1) audio output where on-screen text menus are used to control
video programming functions, and (2) a conspicuous means of
accessing closed captioning and video description, including a
button on remote controls and first level access to these
accessibility features when made available through on-screen menus.

Access Video Programming Guides and Menus. Sec. 205 -This section
requires multichannel video programming distributors to make their
navigational programming guides accessible to people who cannot
read the visual display, so that these individuals can make program
selections.

DOJ To Issue Sweeping Changes On ADA Regulations

Greetings. I received the following information from an email list. If these changes are indeed made to the ADA, then it looks like they will help to make things more accessible, reduce the confusion on exactly what a "service animal" is, and in other areas. For those able to do so, consider participating in the conference call this Wednesday. Enjoy, and as always, please excuse any formatting errors.

***

DOJ Conference Call
Wed June 18th 10:00 A.M.
Dial: (202) 353-0879 or 1-800-521-6079
Pass Code: 3658#

Unofficial text of sweeping NPRM below.  This is the first major NPRM
related to the ADA since the original implimenting regulations were
published.  Several issues of concern to people who are blind either
in terms of proposed rules or in regards to rules that are not defined
in the NPRM.  The article below from Mark Richert of AFB summarizes
these matters.

___
AFB DirectConnect Letterhead

ALERT! Justice Department to Propose Sweeping Revisions to ADA
Regulations

For further information, Contact--

Mark Richert, Esq.
Director, Public Policy, AFB
(202) 822-0833
mrichert@afb.net

(Readers are encouraged to share this alert widely.)

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) is expected next Tuesday, June 17,
to formally issue notices of proposed rule making (NPRMs) to
comprehensively update and revise the federal regulations implementing
the provisions of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) concerning
state and local government and public accommodations. If made final, the
draft regulations would represent the most sweeping changes to federal
ADA implementation and enforcement since DOJ's issuance of the original
ADA regulations in 1991.

Advocates have been anticipating the release of these NPRMs for several
years. Indeed, while a major purpose of these proposed rules is to
formally adopt pending revisions to the highly-technical Accessibility
Guidelines (known as the ADAAG) relating primarily to the physical
environment, DOJ is also required by law to perform a ten-year
evaluation of its regulations, a deadline that it has missed
considerably.

That having been said, some advocates had been hoping that DOJ would not
publish proposed rules this year given both the short time frame now for
completion by January, 2009, and the feared negative treatment of some
issues by the current Administration. Nevertheless, the federal
government has taken action to move these draft proposals forward in
time before a self-imposed government-wide limit on issuance of major
new rules.

Official publication of the NPRMs on Tuesday will start the clock on
what is expected to be a very short 60-day time period in which the
public will have the opportunity to offer comment on any or all of the
draft regulations. The DOJ has made an unofficial advanced text
available (see below for links), and the draft regulations themselves
and their accompanying appendices and related material are voluminous.
While a thorough analysis of the proposed rules is therefore impossible
at this time, there are several areas of obvious interest to the vision
loss community--

* Failure of the proposal to make clear the ADA's applicability to
Internet-only places of public accommodation.

* Possible narrowing of the concept of service animals to those from
particular species and that perform clearly identifiable tasks.

* Possible broader and better defined mandate for description of movies
shown in cinemas.

* Failure to better define the concept of effective communication or to
address accessibility of equipment provided generally to customers/users
of state/local government and public accommodations.

...among many others.

Once the NPRMs are published, we will provide readers with information
regarding how to offer comment, as well as any supporting material
and/or analysis that may be useful in preparing such comments. A growing
number of advocates are indicating that their first response to the
publication of the proposed rules will be a strong call for extension of
the comment period. Extension of the comment period is essentially a
discretionary matter and would obviously impact significantly the
progress toward finalization of the rules during the current
Administration.

Finally, on Wednesday, June 18, beginning at 10:00 am Eastern, the DOJ
will be conducting an informational conference call to acquaint all
interested parties with the scope and general features of the proposed
rules, and DOJ has asked us to spread the word about this opportunity.

To join the call--

Dial: (202) 353-0879 or 1-800-521-6079
Pass Code: 3658#

Links to the advance text of the Proposed Regulations and Other
Documents--

Title II: Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to amend 28 CFR Part 35:
Nondiscrimination on the Basis of Disability in State and Local
Government Services
HTML format:
http://www.ada.gov/NPRM2008/titleii.htm

Title III: Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to amend 28 CFR Part 36:
Nondiscrimination on the Basis of Disability by Public Accommodations
and in Commercial Facilities
HTML format:
http://www.ada.gov/NPRM2008/titleiii.htm

Appendices

Appendix A: Analysis of the Proposed Standards
HTML format:
http://www.ada.gov/NPRM2008/appendix_a.htm

Appendix B: Initial Regulatory Assessment
HTML format:
http://www.ada.gov/NPRM2008/appendix_b.htm

Regulatory Impact Analysis: Initial Regulatory Impact Analysis Of The
Proposed Revised Regulations Implementing Titles II And III of the ADA,
Including Revised ADA Standards For Accessible Design
HTML format:
http://www.ada.gov/NPRM2008/ria.htm

Proposed ADA Standards For Accessible Design
HTML format:
http://www.ada.gov/NPRM2008/ada_standards/proposedadastds.htm

=======================================
Barbara Jackson LeMoine
Policy Analyst
American Foundation for the Blind
Public Policy Center
1660 L Street, N.W., Suite 513
Washington, DC 20036
202-822-0831
E-mail:
blemoine@afb.net
Web:
http://www.afb.org/gov.asp

Expanding possibilities for people with vision lossTM
=======================================