5 Years Since the Law | ZENOAQ [Nippon Zenyaku Kogyo Co., Ltd.]

It has been 5 years since the first law giving access rights to service dog users was enacted in Japan. In 2002 a law concerning service dogs for people with disabilities was passed giving these dogs and their owners the right to use public transportation, to enter public facilities as well as those privately owned facilities that are accessible to the general public. The actual contents of the law were introduced in this column earlier.

Now that 5 years have passed it seems appropriate to investigate how things are moving along.

What is the efficacy of this legal instrument? Have there been any major issues, flaws? What needs to be revised?

The current law gives the right of access to guide dogs, mobility service dogs, and hearing dogs. There are now approximately 1000 dog and user pairs that are active in the country Looking back on the 5 year period during which both dog and user have been placed under legitimate protection, there seems to be two predominant issues that need to be resolved.

The first issue is that pertaining to non - compliance. Though the law states, for example, that privately owned facilities must allow service dogs to enter if the facility is one that is open to the general public, there have been cases where hotels, shops etc. have refused to allow users to enter with their dogs. Unfortunately there is no provision in the law for penalizing non - compliance during such acts of refusal. As a result, these illegal actions go unpunished. The most that can be done is for the authorities to inform facility owners that they "are not allowed" to take such actions under the national law. Service dog users have stated that they are not looking for large fines and other penalties for these actions.
Instead, they say, they would like to see local authorities set up a specific person or office in charge of receiving reports of non - compliance and taking immediate action. Oftentimes when users are refused entry they are unsure of where or to whom they should complain. If that were made clearer, then the lack of a penalty clause should not be such a large drawback.

The second issue that must be addressed is that of private company offices and privately owned housing. Under the current law these two areas are not yet legally obligated to open their doors to service dogs. Though the law "encourages" the owners of these facilities to make efforts to allow service dogs to enter, this cannot be enforced. Hence owners, or employers in the private sector may ask an employee with a disability not to bring his/her dog into the office. Likewise an owner of an apartment building may state that he will not allow service dog users to rent his facility.

This is one area where a revision of the law is definitely called for. Though the year of the review stated in the initial law has come no action has yet been taken by the legislature as regards this specific issue. Let us hope that action will be taken in the not - too - distant future. It should make life so much easier and fairer for all service dog users in the country.

Objective

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