[Massachusetts-NFB] Fwd: [NAGDU] The Why and How of Service Animal Self-ID in Rideshare (forthcoming in the March 2025 Braille Monitor)

[Isabel Rosario]

Best regards,
Isabel Rosario
secretary| Massachusetts Association of blind students
203-993-3045


---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Al Elia via NAGDU <nagdu at nfbnet.org>
Date: Wed, Feb 12, 2025 at 11:46 AM
Subject: [NAGDU] The Why and How of Service Animal Self-ID in Rideshare
(forthcoming in the March 2025 Braille Monitor)
To: NAGDU Mailing List, the National Association of Guide Dog Users <
nagdu at nfbnet.org>
CC: Al Elia <al.elia at aol.com>


The following article will appear in the March 2025 issue of the Braille
Monitor. It is being posted in advance to provide early access to its
information for NAGDU members.

The Why and How of Service Animal Self-ID in Rideshare

by Al Elia

>From the Editor: Al Elia is an attorney and board member of the National
Association of Guide Dog Users (NAGDU), a division of the National
Federation of the
Blind. At the NAGDU board’s request, he has been working with the Advocacy
and Policy team on transportation concerns of guide dog users since his
election to the board in 2021. He serves as the NFB representative on the
Air Carrier Access Act Advisory Committee, and served as the NFB’s
representative on a rideshare Service Animal Working Group in 2022 and
2023. Here is what he has to say about the recently announced programs for
service animal users to self-identify on rideshare platforms:

Federation family, many of you may have heard that rideshare companies are
offering, or intend to offer, a means of voluntarily identifying yourself
as a service animal user on their platforms. You may be wondering how
riders can use this “SelfID” feature, what happens when riders opt to use
it, and why the companies went down this path. This article will hopefully
answer those questions.

Taking the last first, the rideshare companies are offering a SelfID
feature because of the advocacy of the National Federation of the Blind. As
you know, our organization has been advocating, negotiating, and litigating
with rideshare companies over the discriminatory denials of transportation
to guide dog users for more than ten years. Long ago, we reached
settlements with both Uber and Lyft to ensure that their policies
explicitly required drivers to transport service animals in accordance with
federal and state laws; that they educated drivers on that policy and the
requirement to transport us with our service animals; and that they
implemented procedures for reporting, investigating, and disciplining
drivers who deny us rides because of our service animals.

Unfortunately, after many years under those settlements, our experience
riding with our service animals did not meaningfully improve. Since that
was unacceptable, we continued our advocacy, demanding better driver
education on the laws and policies requiring them to transport service
animals and demanding that rideshare companies treat complaints about
service animal denials with the same seriousness as complaints about
assault. The companies agreed, but we still saw no meaningful reduction in
service animal denials. Anecdotal evidence from members, such as drivers
telling us that they didn’t care about policies and would just drive for
the other company if removed from one rideshare platform, also suggested
that driver education would never solve the denial problem. A different
solution was needed.

Meanwhile, we riders were growing tired of shouldering the burden of
establishing evidence of and reporting each and every knowing denial to the
rideshare companies. Many members told us they had stopped reporting
denials altogether because reporting took so much time and didn’t seem to
result in fewer denials. Many of us started messaging drivers to tell them
we had a service animal, effectively self-identifying as service animal
users, in order to have the denial occur earlier in the pickup and reduce
the time we had to wait for a ride that would take us. Those messages also
ensured that the rideshare companies had written evidence to link denials
to our service animals in their investigations so they could remove the
denying drivers from their platforms. We suggested that the rideshare
companies could make our lives easier by sending a similar message for us,
by subsequently reminding drivers that policies and laws required them to
transport service animals if those drivers attempted to cancel our rides
after receiving the message, and by automatically reporting and
investigating drivers who continue to cancel anyway. In order for that to
work, the companies would need riders to tell them ahead of time that they
use a service animal. That was the origin of SelfID.

As many of you know, Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) regulations
permit rideshare companies and drivers to ask two questions of a person
using a service animal: Do you require use of a service animal because of a
disability, and what service is your service animal trained to perform? The
regulations indicate that those questions should not be asked if the
answers are readily apparent, like when it’s a guide dog guiding a blind
person, but in reality many people do not recognize blind people and guide
dogs. As previously mentioned, the National Federation of the Blind
demanded more and better training of drivers to hopefully increase our
recognition. However, we are not confident that any amount of training will
solve the general problem that blindness and guide-dog use are apparently
not obvious, as many of us know from being frequently told that we “don’t
look blind.” In effect, SelfID offers an option for riders to answer
questions in advance that the rideshare companies and their drivers are
already permitted to ask service animal users whenever we use their
services.

The ADA regulations also permit rideshare companies to offer a program that
is specific to riders with disabilities, such as SelfID. However, those
regulations also prohibit the companies from requiring riders with
disabilities to use that program rather than the programs provided for the
general public and also prohibit them from discriminating against riders
with disabilities who choose not to use such a program. In short, riders
have the right not to identify themselves as service animal users before
pickup, and must not suffer different treatment if they enjoy that right.
That is why the National Federation of the Blind insisted that use of
SelfID must be voluntary, that rideshare companies treat all service animal
denial reports and investigations with the same urgency, and that they
continue to educate drivers on the policies and laws requiring them to
transport service animal users whether they choose to use SelfID or not.
The rideshare companies understood and agreed.

While SelfID was an NFB proposal, we did not advocate for it in a vacuum.
We worked with other service animal advocacy and training organizations, as
well as our members, to ensure that community concerns were addressed. When
rideshare companies suggested or piloted SelfID features that could
negatively impact our rights, or offered us little apparent benefit, we
pushed back both privately and publicly, and again worked with members and
other organizations to amplify our message.

As to how the SelfID programs work, only Uber has released its program to
the public. This article will not discuss Lyft’s program because it is
still in a limited pilot and is subject to change.

Uber’s SelfID features are keyed to the rider card that appears on drivers’
screens as they are approaching a rider’s pickup location. SelfID riders
can choose whether or not their use of a service animal appears on that
card along with a reminder that drivers must transport service animals. In
either case, if a driver attempts to cancel the ride after that card
appears, they will be interrupted by a popup reminding them that Uber
policy and the law require them to transport service animals, and that they
may be removed from the Uber platform if they cancel the ride. If a driver
cancels the ride anyway, the rider is paired with a new driver and receives
both an app notification and an email with the following message: “Hi, We
noticed that your driver canceled your ride with your service animal. We
would like to better understand what happened to offer you additional
support. Would you like us to investigate further?” If the rider taps the
notification or emailed link, they can reply as desired, and provide any
additional details in a support message. If the rider replies that they
want Uber to investigate, Uber will investigate the denial in the same
manner and with the same urgency as if the rider had reported a service
animal denial using the phone hotline or Uber’s denial-reporting form. Uber
will continue to take reports of denials through those phone and web/app
reporting mechanisms for riders who prefer to use them, including riders
who do not use SelfID.

The National Federation of the Blind proposed SelfID because we believe
that it will benefit guide dog and other service animal users. As explained
above, it reduces the cognitive and temporal burden of messaging drivers
and reporting denials. As a result, denials are more likely to be reported,
are more likely to be supported by evidence that the driver knew a dog was
a service animal, and are more likely to result in driver deactivations.
This not only benefits SelfID users, but also benefits other service animal
users by reducing the number of denying drivers and by conveying to drivers
generally that Uber is serious about eliminating discrimination.

SelfID will also help quantify service animal denials. In the past,
rideshare companies were not able to compare the cancellation rate for
service animal users to the cancellation rate for others because they did
not know how many times service animal users were transported without being
denied. By having this data, rideshare companies may be able to identify
specific locales or populations suffering disproportionate denials, and
test the effectiveness of different solutions.

The National Federation of the Blind will monitor the rollout of SelfID and
our members’ impressions of the feature. We will continue advocating for
improvements both to SelfID and to rideshare experiences generally for
guide dog users. We have already identified areas for improvement, such as
an option to identify our use of a service animal immediately after a
driver accepts a ride, and changes to simplify the process for telling Uber
to begin an investigation. We are also providing feedback to Lyft to ensure
that its SelfID feature offers the maximum benefit to guide dog users.

If you want to use Uber’s SelfID feature, Uber has the following
information on its website:

“Uber’s Self-ID feature allows riders to notify drivers in-app when a
service animal may be present during a trip. Riders can choose when to
disclose to the driver that they are traveling with a service animal:

   - No disclosure: Drivers won’t see any service animal indication in the
   rider’s profile.
   - Disclosure at pickup: Drivers will be notified upon arrival at the
   pickup location.

To access the eligibility form, go to Account > Settings > Accessibility in
your app profile settings.”
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