EDITORIAL: BUYER BEWARE! by Penny Reeder

When my phone rang last week and I picked up the receiver to find my friend
Bob on the other end, I was delighted.

"I haven't heard from you in a long time," I said. "Are you thinking about
writing an article for the Forum, and how's your summer going? How's your
dog coping with this heat?"

Neither Bob nor his guide dog were coping very well, it turned out, not
because of the extreme temperatures or the poor air quality on the eastern
seaboard, but because of the unacceptably rude treatment they had received
- no, not from a negligent cab driver - but from a foundation which
advertises itself as providing services for people who are blind.

Here's some of what Bob described. He has been hoping to improve his
computer skills for a while, so when he read in "The Braille Forum's" Here
and There column, and also among the notices posted to the Matilda Ziegler
Magazine about a foundation which not only provides computer training to
people who are blind, but also gives them the computer they learned to use
during that training, he was excited. All a person needed to do, according
to the notices, was come up with the money for air fare and buy a lowend,
lowcost screenreading software package, and the foundation would provide
the rest - the training, two weeks' lodging, and a Pentium computer! It
sounded too good to be true, and Bob had eagerly called Communicating
Computers for the Blind to learn more.

The conversation went well in the beginning, Bob said. Yes, he was totally
blind. No, he didn't already own a Pentium computer, and yes, he was
searching for the training that would allow him to feel at ease on the
Internet, deal with email, and sharpen his wordprocessing skills.

But when Bob mentioned that he would be traveling with his guide dog, the
conversation took a turn in a wrong direction.

"We don't allow any dogs," the gentleman on the other side of the phone
said in a voice that began to sound rather shrill and decidedly unfriendly.
"Why do you need a dog, anyway?" the guy continued. "You're just getting on
a plane for *C***'sake. I'm not going to have any dogs crappin' all over my
property ..."

The harangue continued in this vein. Bob said that he would be willing to
stay in a hotel and commute to the training facility (which turned out to
be a private home), but the "administrator" on the other side of the
conversation was having none of it. Under no circumstances, he told Bob,
could he bring his guide dog to the Spearfish, S.D. training facility.

I was shocked and angry. How dare anyone - but especially someone who
purported to be in the business of helping people who are blind - treat my
friend, who is one of the kindest people I know, in this disgraceful way?
Wasn't this socalled "foundation" breaking the law? I told my friend that I
would try to find out more and that, at the very least, we would put a
cautionary message in "The Braille Forum," warning others, especially
people who travel with guide dogs, to avoid this "training opportunity."

Consider yourselves warned. Communicating Computers for the Blind, which is
a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit foundation, does not allow guide dog users
to attend training if they want to bring along their canine mobility aids.
More than one person has reported having an experience similar to Bob's.

A day or two after my conversation with Bob, I received a call from a
representative of one of the country's most respected guide dog schools.
She told me that the school had received a call from one of their graduates
detailing a similar - and in some ways even more disturbing - experience.

The spokesman for the foundation had said some similar things - no guide
dogs here, they're not allowed, etc., etc.; and why would you need a dog
anyway... This gentleman, who, like Bob, really wanted some decent training
in using computers and didn't have the wherewithal for the training and the
software and the computer, had said in a thinkingoutloud kind of way,
"Well, I do have a little bit of vision. Maybe I could make it without my
dog ..."

Seizing on the "little bit of vision," remark, the foundation's spokesman
asked, "How much vision do you have anyway?"

"I think it's at about 20/800," the prospective student replied, whereupon
the foundation spokesperson said, "You shouldn't have a dog anyway! If you
had gone to a reputable guide dog school," he continued, making reference
to one of the world's best known schools as an example, "You would never
have been given a dog."

So here we have outright, unapologetic discrimination against guide dog
users and, in addition, rudeness, intimidation, and a complete falsehood!!
We at "The Braille Forum" are outraged! Who do these foundation folks think
they are, we want to know? How dare they use our "Here and There" column to
promote services which they deny to a portion of the blind and visually
impaired population, and can anything be done to stop their shameful
discrimination against blind and visually impaired people? On August 14, I
called Communicating Computers for the Blind and identified myself as a
journalist who wanted to learn more about the organization.

Arianna Calesso answered the phone, but she told me she was in the midst of
training a student, so she handed the phone over to her husband, Lou.

The Communicating Computers for the Blind foundation, registered last
August in South Dakota as a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt non-profit entity, seems
to be a twoperson organization. Arianna Calesso provides the training, and
Lou handles the administrative details of running the business. Both are blind.

They moved to South Dakota from New Jersey, when Lou retired from 50 years
of employment with Bell Labs. Before they got to South Dakota, Calesso told
me, they were DOS users, but when they moved to the state, they each
received two weeks of "accelerated computer training" from the vocational
rehabilitation agency's Division of Services for the Blind and Visually
Impaired.

After that, they felt they were ready to set up shop.

Calesso told me that the computers the foundation gives away are
refurbished machines, donated by businesses who are upgrading their
computer equipment and hence don't need them any longer, and have come from
such corporations as Wells Fargo and AT&T of New Jersey. He said that his
wife provides oneonone training to individuals who live with the couple
during the twoweek training period.

"We're already booked up all the way through December of 2003," he told me.

When I asked him if a blind person would be able to attend training if he
or she were accompanied by a guide dog, Calesso's demeanor became less
friendly. "Dogs bring in fleas and hair," he said. "We're not a motel. Our
students live here in our home for two weeks, and we're not having strange
dogs coming in here and contaminating our home."

When I asked him if he realized that he and his wife were discriminating
against guide dog users, he said that they were not really discriminating
against people. "We're just discriminating against the dogs," he explained,
"and there's nothing wrong with that."

In the moments that followed, Calesso, who identified himself and his wife
as past presidents of the New Jersey state ACB affiliate and current
members of the South Dakota Association of the Blind, said, "I've been to
my share of conventions. I've run into dogs that stink and have no manners.
I've seen dogs that poop anywhere they want and owners who don't clean up
... I used to work in Morristown, N.J., right next to The Seeing Eye and I
know the school teaches students to clean up, but once they leave the
school, they can do whatever they want ... This is a private home. I'm not
having any dog fleaing up my place, or crapping all over my yard ..."

Calesso said that the foundation happened to be training a guide dog user
at that very moment. She flew here from San Francisco, he explained, but
when she got here, she boarded her dog in a local kennel.

"We don't want people traveling across the country and showing up on our
doorstep with their smelly dogs."

When I asked how a guide dog user would manage to travel and orient him or
herself without the guide dog, Calesso said, "They wouldn't need the dog.
There's nowhere to go here, they live in their own room in our house and
they could learn all they would need to know about their surroundings in
about five minutes."

"Besides," he continued, "We have a cat. We would be putting our cat in
danger and creating a bad, smelly, possibly flea-infested environment for
any students who came later."

On a roll now, he asked who had "put me up" to this interview.

"Just because some cranks, who have nothing better to do than bad-mouth
somebody who is only trying to help blind people better themselves, call
you up," he said, "you don't have to call me up with all these questions
about dogs. We're providing a service here, and that's what you should be
writing about in your magazine."

I assured Calesso that neither my friend nor the representative from the
guide dog school were cranks, and the issue of denying services to guide
dog users is no small matter.

I spent about 20 minutes on the phone with Lou Calesso. Although I cannot
comment on the caliber of the training his foundation allegedly provides, I
can tell you that I am unimpressed with his manners, his understanding of
civil rights laws, guide dog users, or the kinds of relationships we dog
users have with our canine partners. His understanding of logic doesn't
impress me much either. He told me that his not allowing people to bring
guide dogs into his home was no different from my not allowing people to
smoke inside my own home. When I tried to explain that the two situations
are not analogous in any way, he refused to understand why.

When I spoke to Linda Biffert, president of the South Dakota Association
for the Blind, she confirmed that the Calessos are, indeed, members of that
ACB state affiliate. "I don't know anything about their foundation," she
said, "but if they refuse to serve blind people who use guide dogs, then
they are discriminating against them and they need to understand that that
isn't acceptable."

I agree. Here is some information from the Americans with Disabilities Act,
Title III, technical assistance manual, which is available from the U.S.
Department of Justice web site at

www.usdoj.gov [ spell]: III 3.12000 Places of public accommodation located
in private residences.

When a place of public accommodation is located in a home, the portions of
the home used as a place of public accommodation are covered by Title III,
even if those portions are also used for residential purposes ...

Isn't it sad that two longtime members of ACB have such a limited
understanding of the rights of people who are blind under the Americans
with Disabilities Act? Where were Lou and Arianna when the provisions of
the ADA were discussed at chapter meetings, in the pages of "The Braille
Forum," and at state and national conventions? Did they simply miss this
bit of information, repeated hundreds of times since passage of the law in
1990? Or did they choose not to hear, not to learn, not to acknowledge that
every person with a disability - even blind people who choose to use guide
dogs - has civil rights which include that of bringing their dogs anywhere
a sighted person might venture (with his or her eyeballs)? Or do they
choose to ignore the civil rights of guide dog users, thinking to
themselves that the service they are providing to other blind people will
make up for their blatant discrimination against those of us who travel
with guide dogs?

ACB is an organization that welcomes all kinds of people with all kinds of
points of view, but we are not an organization that, for one minute,
welcomes behaviors which discriminate against blind people.

As for what I can do about such abhorrent behavior, I can tell my readers
that "The Braille Forum" regrets ever having given any publicity to this
"charitable" foundation, and I can encourage you not to "take advantage" of
their "free" computers. The computers are tainted by the offensive
discriminatory practices of the foundation and not worth the price of
knowing that certain of our blind brothers and sisters are being denied
services for no better reason than that the Calessos don't like dogs.

I am not a lawyer, but I can file a complaint with the U.S. Department of
Justice. As we go to press on August 15, that's exactly what I am preparing
to do.


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