Uber’s Commitment to Users with Service Animals
By Briana Gilmore, Head of Global Accessibility and Underserved Communities Policy and Chris Yoon, Product Manager in Uber’s Product Equity Team
Service animals are essential mobility aids for hundreds of thousands of people with disabilities. They support the safety, independence, and mobility of their handlers, many of whom are riders on the Uber platform.
And while we’re proud of the role that Uber has played in transforming mobility for this community and all people with disabilities, we know we have more work to do to help people with service animals move freely and with dignity.
Over the past year, we have been working with drivers and experts in the guide dog and service animal field to explore how we can improve the experience for both drivers and service animal handlers. We’ve learned about the priorities of users who travel with service animals and how Uber can promote dignified, independent transport through our platform. Today, we’re sharing some important changes and commitments we’ve made.
Our Service Animal Policy is clearly communicated to drivers.
We are sending all drivers in the US and Canada a full-screen reminder of our policy that outlines the legal rights of service animal handlers and the consequences of denying a ride to a user traveling with a service animal. If we determine a driver on the Uber platform has knowingly denied a ride to a user with a service animal, they will permanently lose access to earning with the Uber platform. This new policy reminder is in addition to the other ways drivers regularly receive this information, including in their terms of agreement, in our community guidelines, and in quarterly email reminders.
We created a service animal denial reporting line for riders traveling with service animals.
If you’re a service animal handler and you have experienced a trip denial that you suspect was because of your animal, you can now reach us by phone at 1–833–715–8237 to report the incident. We built this resource as an additional way for users with service animals to communicate directly with our investigations team. Riders still have the option to submit the issue for investigation directly through the app if preferred.
Riders can view trips canceled by their driver prior to pickup in their ride history.
In addition to a new reporting line specific to ride denials experienced by service animal handlers, we heard from the community about the need for access to all canceled trip information in a rider’s account. Previously, only details about completed rides or rides canceled by the rider were listed in a rider’s trip history. This made it difficult for a rider to access relevant trip information if they suspected a denial was based on discrimination and wanted to report it to us for investigation.
To help improve the reporting process, riders can now access information about trips canceled by drivers prior to pickup in their ride history. It is our hope that this will create a more efficient experience for riders with service animals in the event they need to report a trip denial.
We commit to increasing transparency related to the experiences of service animal owners on the Uber platform.
We want our users with service animals to have evidence of our policy and solutions at work. In order to shine a light on the experiences of service animal handlers on the Uber platform, we will partner with experts and members of the community to determine how we can build on our processes to foster more accountability and transparency.
We are committed to building together.
We are driven every day by our commitment to help make our platform an inclusive place for all users, and these changes are just the beginning. We want our message to the service animal community to be clear: we welcome you, and we are dedicated to building on this work together.
