Survey: Share Your Experience Using a Service Animal in Public Spaces
by Beth
Last month I wrote a post here about an article in Outside magazine. In that article, journalist Wes Siler — a dog lover who does not have a disability — expressed his concern over people without disabilities faking that their dogs are service animals, and now the Southwest ADA Center wants assistance animal users to fill out an anonymous survey to learn more about our experiences accessing public places with our animals. From their press release:
“The information gathered from it will help us 1) understand what access issues people are having with their animals; and 2) to develop and improve the information, support, and guidance needed for the community to improve access for users of assistance animals.
Whether you use a service animal or other type of assistance animal, we would like to hear from you.”
I just filled out the survey myself. After confirming my eligibility for this survey on the first page, I could skip any other questions I preferred not to answer. That made the form easy to fill out. I did it with my talking computer, and it only took about ten minutes.
I hope you Easterseals blog readers who use assistance animals will fill out the survey – people need to know more about our experiences getting access to public places. Any questions about the research study? Contact Vinh Nguyen at the Southland ADA Center at vinhn@bcm.edu.