[blindkid] question re shopping assistance

[Richard Holloway]

There is one other strategy that may  also be useful, especially if  
the goal is public awareness and the benefit of blind shoppers  
everywhere.

Earlier this year, a (typically-sighted) fellow was flying on United  
Airlines. Many of you may know this story-- He was a musician and  
flying to play some jobs with his band. The airline employees threw  
some of their equipment about in plain view of passengers on the  
ground. They broke the fellow's $3500 guitar and refused to pay for  
the $1200 repair it required.

Instead of suing them etc., he wrote a song and made a video about  
this (which is very funny and worth a look just for how clever it is).  
Now, a few months later, the video has just under 6.5 MILLION viewings  
and has no doubt cost the airline a fortune. A story like the one we  
have been discussing might not make a great music video (or perhaps it  
would-- I'm not discouraging that either) but Sears wants to sell  
things to customers and therefore wants customers to like them.  
Cleverly, or even just politely getting the word out that Unlike 2 or  
5 or 25 of the OTHER stores in your local mall, Sears does not wish to  
be bothered to help a blind shopper makes them look bad. You might  
therefore start by calling your local TV station, especially while it  
is still the holiday shopping season. Just remember to be polite on  
camera if you can get TV involved-- we don't want to look angry about  
this-- only as if we are the recipients of poor treatment, as we  
clearly are in this case. ("We" being the collective blind and their  
parents in this case)

The threat of loosing one customer is small to a huge place like  
Sears. You tube postings and TV News stories on things like this can  
cause them a lot more harm and encourage them to comply not just once,  
but by policy. I'm reminded of when Six Flags here in Atlanta refused  
to let a number of blind patrons in during an NFB convention of all  
times, because they wanted to bring in their white canes. TV cameras  
showed up and suddenly there were blind folks in the park WITH their  
canes.

Could there or should there be follow-up legal dealings? Perhaps. But  
the bottom line is that the court of public opinion is the one that  
will provide the speediest result in a great many cases!

To see the United video BTW, simply Google "United Breaks Guitars".  
There are actually two different videos now and that fellow intends to  
make a third one. The songwriter incidentally has now refused to  
accept payment from United for his loss (they only agreed to pay AFTER  
a giant public reaction). He has asked United (also very publicly--  
this is on youtube as well) instead to offer any payment which they  
would have made to him to the charity of their choice only requesting  
that they make public the amount and recipient. I understand the  
guitar company (mentioned in the songs as well) has also given this  
fellow a number of free instruments...  I really think there is a  
lesson in that story for many of us, both blind and sighted.

Richard


On Dec 10, 2009, at 8:17 AM, LESLEY FISCHER wrote:

> Susan,
> I forgot to add this one- http://www.ada.gov/cguide.htm  it states  
> more on
> public accommodations.
> Thanks
> Lesley
> On Wed, Dec 9, 2009 at 7:58 AM, SUSAN POLANSKY  
> <sepolansky at verizon.net>wrote:
>
>> This week my son's O&M lesson was at the mall where he was going to  
>> do his
>> Christmas shopping. He has his list and his money and off he went  
>> with his
>> O&M teacher. In each store he was to ask for assistance to look for  
>> the
>> desired item. This went well in until they got to Sears. He went to  
>> customer
>> service and requested someone to assist him to shop and was told
>> that they did not have anyone to do that. When I asked what the
>> O&M teacher said about that he stated he was told that there was  
>> nothing
>> they could do about it as there is no law that says the store has  
>> to provide
>> him with assistance. Now I am 99% sure that this is not correct.  
>> Can someone
>> cite the law to me? Thanks.
>>
>> Susan
>>
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