Masa Mehta testifies on service animal denials and Intro 1107

We'll pass it now to Mossa Miata.

Good afternoon.

Thank you so much.

My name is Masa Mehta.

I am representing the National Federation of the Blind of New York.

I am a service animal handler myself.

I have my guide dog with me.

She is not a parrot.

And I wanted to speak a little bit in support of the educational campaign and the guidance and information for service animal handlers and businesses.

I myself have been denied entry and refused service from quite a few places, unfortunately, retail establishments, restaurants, even public agencies, because

either businesses don't know the difference between an emotional support animal and a service animal, or they don't know the ADA or the provisions or the NYC human rights law.

Both of these are pretty big problems to not know about.

And it's really tough because it's kind of this idea of a thousand paper cuts, you know, like this takes a huge toll on my community because essentially we're being shut out of accessing areas of public life that our fellow New Yorkers have access to.

And so this bill really aims to provide.

clear information so that businesses can take advantage of our patronage, but we can also take advantage of their services.

I also wanted to talk about the fact that I believe that businesses are not intentionally trying to break the law.

I think that in most cases, they just don't know.

And the city can do a huge service to this by modeling clear standards, providing these service animal welcome signs, and even, you know, thinking about how accessibility plays in as well.

Someone from the MOPD had mentioned these signs in bus stops saying that

Everyone has the right to enter with a service animal.

So it kind of goes both ways, right?

We can provide information to these businesses, but also information to handlers.

I am blind.

So that information needs to be accessible to me.

So that could mean it's screen reader accessible in a digital format that is accessible to me or even, you know, ASL, whatever people need to be able to do to actually review this information is important.

And specifically for this bill, this material is reviewed every three years and service animal handlers need to have a seat at that table.

Like this is not something we can be consulted about afterwards.

This is something we need to be in the room for so that we can make the appropriate changes.

So thank you so much for your time.

Thank you.

I have a