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By Gerald E. Sheldon for The Washington Post
As a dog lover and a former dog exhibitor and breeder, I was drawn to the Sept. 2 Metro article “In study, cabs bypass fares with guide dogs,†about the difficulty that blind people with guide dogs sometimes have getting a taxi to stop for them.
The article reported that the Equal Rights Center conducted 30 tests and that in half of them taxi drivers passed someone with a guide dog to pick up someone without a guide dog. The article also pointed out that under local and federal law, businesses must make reasonable accommodations for blind people and their service dogs.
I believe the tests were flawed because they left out a group that should have been included. The missing group is sighted people with dogs of similar size to the service dogs. (Paris Hilton with her Chihuahua need not apply.)
I am confident that the sighted people with dogs would also have been passed on by the cabbies.
The Post headline might then have read, “Blind and sighted people treated equally — dogs discriminated against.â€