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Paws Rights: an app for refusal of assistance animals on transport

Flinders University law students create an impressive app to help people with assistance animals who are illegally turned away from rides.

Flinders University law students have created an innovative app to help people with assistance dogs who are illegally turned away from public transport, taxis and services such as Uber.

Law students Sarah Milne, Emily Prater and Callie Symonds collaborated with computer science students Louis MacConnell and Alex Priest to create the helpful Paws Rights app.

People with assistance animals often get refused by transport services, even though it is against the law. The app aims to make it easier for people with assistance animals to educate transport services about their rights and make reports when they are illegally refused service. All from the convenience of their phone.

The students worked with their clients, Dr Amanda Muller and Ellen Fraser-Barbour, who have both experienced discrimination in the transport industry, with Ellen once being turned away by Uber three times in one day.

“This truly is a silent issue that faces many people with assistance animals and needs to be addressed in a way that makes it accessible and easy,” said Louis MacConnell.

Students: Louis Macconnell, Sarah Milne, Alex Priest and Callie Symonds from left to right (Student Emily Prater presented remotely and clients Dr Amanda Muller and Ellen Fraser-Barbour attended virtually.)

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To make the problem even worse, the process of reporting these illegal refusals is complex and difficult to access. Paws Rights makes it much easier for users to fill out the relevant details and then compile a document they can send to the Department for Infrastructure and Transport.

“We worked with Ellen to ensure that the app was accessible and easy to use, and implemented the use of colour to ensure that the buttons in the application were easily seen.

The application is able to be used with text-to-speech options as well, to add to the accessibility for vision impaired users,” said Emily Prater.

Ultimately, the hope is that the app will also be able to be used for hospitality and retail venues.

“Our app will assist a wide range of users who encounter incidents that usually go unheard, as it’s still such a silent issue,” said Callie.

Paws Rights was developed as part of the Law in a Digital Age course, which was introduced last year in an innovative reform of the law subjects that Flinders University delivers.

All Flinders University’s law students now undertake this course, where they work in teams with computer science students to create simple legal software for real world not-for-profit clients.

Students also have the opportunity to complete three legal innovation topics, as well as Law in Action, a clinical legal education topic that includes legal technology placements at law firms , and more collaboration with Computer Science in the Flinders Digital Law Lab.

“This is the most innovative law curriculum in Australia. Nowhere else are students engaging with industry and solving complex legal problems in an innovative way like this,” said Professor Michael Gilding, Vice President and Executive Dean.

These changes have made the Bachelor of Laws and the Bachelor of Laws and Legal Practice at Flinders one of the most innovative and sought after law programs in the country. Not only does it give students the digital skills needed to make the most of emerging technologies but it also aims to make legal services more accessible.

Dean of Law Tania Leiman, Lecturer Mark Ferraretto, and Vice-President and Executive Dean Michael Gilding.

“The vast majority of our community can’t afford to access legal services,” said Associate Professor Tania Leiman, Dean of Law.

“We need cheaper, more efficient, more accessible legal information and advice. At Flinders University we have completely transformed our law degree to think far more innovatively about how legal services can be provided in future.”

In addition to covering the key academic areas needed for admission to legal practice, Flinders Law degrees also include cutting-edge skills in legal technology and human centred design thinking.

These changes are already having real-world impact. Five of the applications developed as part of the Law in a Digital Age course have already been fully commissioned by their clients, with twelve more developed so far in 2021.