It was nearly two years ago that Steve Elliot and his guide dog, Laird, traveled to San Francisco for the “ Rideshare Rally ” to join other people who are blind or visually impaired. The idea was to protest access denials by rideshare drivers outside the Lyft and Uber headquarters.

Ironically, after having dinner with another guide dog handler, a Lyft driver tried to refuse to drive them by saying, “I’m not taking you. You have dogs.”

Elliot, an administrative law judge and mediator with the Texas State Office of Administrative Hearings, used his professional skills to explain that service dogs like their guide dogs are legally allowed access under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). The driver could either agree to take them to their destination, or they could file a complaint with Lyft and the Department of Justice.

Ultimately the man agreed to drive them.

“Eventually we got back to our hotel, but it was stressful,” Elliot said. “In our case, I’m trained as a mediator, so I’m skilled at that type of conflict resolution, but not everybody has that skillset. That’s a big ask of a guide dog handler to have to be able to negotiate just a basic transportation situation.”

It wasn’t an isolated incident. Elliot and his wife like to stay at Airbnb vacation rentals when they travel, and typically after booking, he sends a message to the host that they’ll be traveling with his guide dog so there are no surprises.

But on a recent trip to Santa Cruz, California, as soon as Elliot sent the message mentioning his guide dog, Laird, the host immediately cancelled the booking.

“So then we reached out to Airbnb, and thankfully Airbnb was equally incensed. They were like, ‘This is not happening. This is not supposed to happen. They can’t do this.’ They immediately contacted the host. They reinstated our reservation, made the host do service animal education and we stayed at the accommodation,” he said. “But after that, despite not breaking anything or not having the dog chew any furniture or anything, they wrote us a bad review. ‘This couple was not a good fit for us,’ which to me is like hanging a sign that disabled people aren’t welcome. It was very offensive.”

It is also making the couple question whether if that happens in the future, whether they should just find somewhere else to stay — which Elliot worries would reward bad behavior.

Guide Dog Denials Are A Common Issue

The issue of guide dog handlers being denied access by businesses where they are legally permitted to have a service dog is widespread, according to Kirsten French, manager of community education and advocacy at the nonprofit guide dog school Guide Dogs for the Blind .

“We did a study that was published in 2024 that found 83 percent of guide dog handlers have experienced at least one rideshare denial. There’s also another study done internationally that found overall that 56 percent were experiencing it internationally, that this isn’t just a national problem,” she said. “While rideshare is the most prevalent denial, it is quickly followed up by hotels, hospitality spaces, restaurants, other public spaces, medical offices.”

As a guide dog handler to Knightley, a female yellow Lab, French has experienced denials herself. In fact, last year she was denied a ride by a Lyft driver on her first day of work for Guide Dogs for the Blind. She’s ordered an early-morning ride from her home in Vancouver, Washington, to the airport so that she could fly to the nonprofit’s campus in San Rafael, California.

As soon as she left a note that she was traveling with a guide dog, the driver cancelled the ride — and when she tried to order another one, it was going to take 20 minutes for the new driver to arrive.

“Now it’s starting to get into a crunch time of, ‘Am I going to make it to the airport in time? Am I going to be able to make it through security in time? Am I going to be late on my first day of work? Am I going to miss a flight?’” she recalled. “It isn’t just a minor inconvenience of, ‘Oh, I’ll just wait for the next one.’ It is something that’s really significant and has true psychological, financial and social impacts.”

French did make her flight — though there was a lot of stress and running through the airport involved. In another instance, she arrived with Knightley at a hotel where her family and friends were staying for her cousin’s wedding, and the hotel employee at the check-in counter took one look at her guide dog and said, “No dogs.”

It was a deflating moment in what was supposed to be a joyous event, but because of her job — and past experiences — French was prepared. Before checking into a hotel, she always has the ADA law about service animals pulled up on her phone. (Go to ADA.gov and search on “service animals” or “service dog” for the link.) She also runs through potential conversations in her mind so that she’s ready to show the ADA law when someone tells her that the guide dog isn’t allowed inside — and talk about it.

“I’ll say, ‘These are the two questions you can ask: Is this dog required because of a disability? What task has this dog been trained to do?’ And I will say, ‘And my answer to those two questions are, yes, she is required because of a disability, and she has been trained as a guide dog because I am blind. That is all that you can ask and we have access,’” she said. “I’ll oftentimes have state laws pulled up. And if it continues to go further than that, then I will talk about what is the next action that I’m going to take of talking to a manager.”

In some states, there is space to call the police and even report the incident at the federal level. French always prefers to start with information and education about legal access for service dogs, but if it doesn’t work, she does insist on her right to access so that it doesn’t happen there to another guide dog handler in the future.

The New Public Service Announcement From Guide Dogs For The Blind

To help raise public awareness of how ridiculous it is to deny service to a person with a guide dog, Guide Dogs for the Blind released a public service announcement titled “ Nonsense ” to coincide with September’s National Guide Dog Month.

The satirical PSA features a guide dog handler being denied access by rideshare, restaurant and hotel employees — as well as people who are told similarly ludicrous things like, “I don’t take people going to job interviews” or “Unfortunately, we don’t allow guests checking in for weddings.”

The PSA concludes by explaining there’s a difference between nonsense and access, and that access for guide dogs isn’t optional, ending, “Let them in. Let them work.”

French hopes the PSA will also be used as a training tool by businesses for their employees to learn about service dog access.

“On our community education side, which I oversee, we are always available to work with businesses as they develop their training,” she said. “One of the goals with this PSA is to engage with hospitality groups and restaurant groups in their employee preparedness and their employee resources at conferences and other settings to help them provide these resources for training so that the access can be true across the board.”

The Problem Of Fake Service Dogs

One frustrating issue that can lead to denials of service dogs is the phenomenon of people pretending their pet dog is a service dog. Whenever French enters a restaurant that doesn’t want to allow her guide dog because of past bad experiences with alleged service dogs standing on a table, urinating, barking or bothering other customers, she explains that service dog handlers have a responsibility to maintain control of their dog and to make sure they are clean and vaccinated.

Otherwise, under the ADA, the business has a right to ask them to leave.

“That’s also a space of how we can build an allyship space of saying, ‘That shouldn’t have happened. You, as a business, you had every right to say no, they can’t access this space because they are out of control. They are causing a direct health and safety issue. They are not housebroken,’” she said. “’If my dog were to do it, you’d be welcome to kick us out.’ A lot of times I’ll say that. I will also say, ‘It won’t happen, but you would be allowed to because we all have a role to play in access.’”

Service dogs bred, raised and trained by reputable nonprofits like Guide Dogs for the Blind are extremely well trained by their puppy raisers and professional trainers to be comfortable in different situations and to not be reactive to other dogs, she noted. So it’s both obvious and upsetting when a legitimate guide dog is attacked by a phony service dog in the grocery store, as has happened to guide dogs of handlers she knows.

How To Be An Ally Of Guide Dog Handlers

In addition to not having a fake service dog, people can be allies to guide dog handlers by spreading awareness of access laws to friends and family in person and on social media, possibly by sharing the new PSA.

Never ask someone with a guide dog, “Are you really blind?” as has happened to French numerous times.

“Different visual impairments look different,” she said. “That is also degrading as a human to say, ‘I am doubting your human experience.’”

Finally, French says it’s welcome when members of the public stand up for guide dog handlers if they see them being denied access by a rideshare driver or in a hotel, restaurant or other business.

“It can be really helpful when someone steps up and says something like, ‘Yes, this person has access,’ or ‘Yes, this is the law,’” she said. “We can be allies in how we’re speaking up and how we’re showing up.”