- From: T. V. Raman <tvraman@almaden.ibm.com>
- Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2001 18:41:10 -0800
- To: w3c-wai-ig@w3.org, w3c-wai-ua@w3.org, w3c-wai-pf@w3.org
I'm posting this here as an alert to any WAI members travelling to Europe with guide dogs. Europe still appears to be an access blackhole in many respects --inaccessible hotels, cab drivers who refuse guide dogs etc. --the absence of something like the ADA is glaringly obvious. My first two trips to Europe with my guide-dog Bubbels --Munich and Amsterdam were pleasant and uneventful-- This time I had serious trouble returning from Europe Paris (see below)-- and in summary I would recommend avoiding Paris in general-- and Air France at all costs. We went to Turin (Italy) for the voice browser FTF via Paris --had a ticket on Delta Airways who have a co-share with Air France. So I had a non-stop SFO->Paris --and a Paris->Turin flight both directions operated by Air France. The trip out was uneventful --no trouble. On the return when I landed at Paris they asked me if I had a muzzle for my dog. I said yes, and that I'd put it on her when they wanted me to. (Incidentally this in itself was a first in 12 years of guide-dog use). At this point I put on the muzzle on Bubble dog --and assumed all would be okay. The Air france rep then told me that the muzzle was not a French muzzle and therefore did not meet French standards-- and that they would not let me board my flight to SFO. I explained to them that this was a American guide-dog school approved muzzle conforming to the law-- they then said that it might conform to American law but it did not conform to French law and that they would not let me board. Then they helpfully offered to package up Bubble dog in the cargo making it sound like a great favor saying "but she will be on the same plane as you"-- When further asked why they had not mentioned this in SFO when I travelled out, they said that that time were leaving the US --so it was different --this time they said because we were in Paris they would enforce French law. At this point I told them that I had a ticket on an American airline --they continued to insist that since was only a co-share agreement with delta they were not obliged to do what Delta did. I finally had them connect me with Delta Airways who promptly put me on a plane operated by Delta --so we ended up getting routed through Atlanta and came home 6 hours later than we would have. In summary the situation ended much better than it might have purely because I had bought my ticket from an American airline company as opposed to directly from Air France. -- Best Regards, --raman ------------------------------------------------------------ IBM Research: Human Language Technologies Phone: 1 (408) 927 2608 Fax: 1 (408) 927 3012 Email: tvraman@us.ibm.com WWW: http://www.cs.cornell.edu/home/raman PGP: http://cs.cornell.edu/home/raman/raman.asc Snail: IBM Almaden Research Center, 650 Harry Road San Jose 95120
Received on Thursday, 25 January 2001 21:42:30 UTC