Is Uber letting its drivers dodge The Americans with
Disabilities Act?
Sometimes it slips Kristin Parisi’s mind that she’s
disabled. After 25 years in a wheelchair—the result of a car accident when she
was 5 years old—her means of transportation no longer registers as abnormal.
“It’s one of those things I forget—that I’m disabled—until
someone tells me I am,” the 30-year-old public-relations executive says.
That reminder came in early April, when she left her office
in Boston on a rainy day to meet an Uber she’d ordered on her phone. When the
driver pulled up in his Mercedes sedan he took one look at her and said, “No,
no, no.” He indicated her wheelchair. “That’s never going to fit in my car.” It
would, Parisi replied—it fits easily into the trunk of her own compact car.
After an extended argument, she gave up. She ended up getting a ride with a
passerby and his teenage daughter.
A twice-weekly Uber customer of two years, Parisi was
surprised by the slight. “The first incident was, I thought, a fluke,” she
says. Two weeks later, she ordered another car on Uber. The woman behind the
wheel again told Parisi her chair wouldn’t fit in the trunk. This time, Parisi
didn’t take no for an answer. She says she loaded herself and her chair into
the back of the car without help from the driver, only to receive an earful of
abuse for the entire trip to the airport.
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