Uber to Offer Limited Access Services


Under threat of a lawsuit from disability advocates, the ride-sharing company Uber is unveiling a new limited service to provide transportation options for wheelchair users living in over 200 cities around the world.

Uber announced through its blog that it is establishing a partnership with the Chicago-based Open Door Organization to provide its UberASSIST service, where trained drivers would provide assistance to riders who use foldable wheelchairs. The company also plans to offer another service called UberACCESS, which will provide a wheelchair-accessible vehicle to those who need one.

But advocate David Wittie, an organizer with Texas ADAPT and participant on a transportation task force along with representatives of Uber, has two concerns with Uber’s plans. First, there are not currently enough qualified drivers with lift-equipped vans to handle the demand. “The Uber people are planning on doing this portion of their business around the good graces and generosity of a very small part of the [disabled] population that has more time on their hands to drive other people around,” he says.

It is hard to gauge what the demand actually is, since according to Wittie, Uber is refusing to release data on its number of daily pickups or number of people with disabilities requesting rides. The company claims it’s proprietary information.

Wittie’s second concern is that Uber wants to farm out demand for accessibility that cannot be met by its small pool of drivers of lift-equipped vehicles. “The response I’ve heard from Uber personally is that the plan is to subcontract to a cab company,” he says.

Although Uber seems to have avoided a lawsuit by wheelchair users for the time being, it has found itself in hot water with its blind customers. The National Federation of the Blind of California is suing Uber in response to complaints ranging from drivers refusing to pick up blind customers to a driver actually putting a blind person’s service dog in the car trunk.


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