I've been meaning to post a link to the amazing Sept. 12 New York Times article by its Dining critic Frank Bruni about the access -- or lack thereof -- of NYC restaurants. I call it "amazing" because it's the first I've ever seen of a major news article noting the problem of places which insist they ARE "accessible" being anything but.
It's a phenomenon that's all too familiar to diners who use wheelchairs -- but it's rarely talked about: " the ways in which even the most accessible restaurants . . . fail to accommodate disabled diners as well as they do the rest of us."
Bruni's article, When Accessibility Isn’t Hospitality, continued:
I check on restaurants’ wheelchair accessibility every week for my reviews for The Times, but even I didn’t appreciate the obstacles people without full mobility face until I dined with one of them, which is what I did after Jill Abramson, managing editor of The New York Times, was injured in an accident last May. . . .
So while she was progressing from wheelchair to crutches to cane, I went with her to four restaurants that said they were at least partially accessible to see how true that was.
At most of them we encountered hosts and servers who seemed earnestly determined to be as helpful as they could.
But we also encountered unhappy surprises and challenging circumstances. And we learned what disabled diners know too well: eating out is almost never easy. [Emphasis added.]
Bruni's article may have elicited more responses from readers than any other restaurant article he's ever written.
In the emails he received, he wrote in his blog, readers
spoke to how frustrated they feel and how grateful they were to have their reality recognized. Many of the readers who wrote me drew special attention to the discrepancy between the promises of accessibility that restaurants make and the actual experience of visiting those restaurants.
Here are some snips from those emails:
I’m delighted you’ve brought these problems to public awareness. The restaurants that irk me most are the ones that claim to be accessible when I call ahead but in fact have a small flight of steps just to get in the door —steps, no doubt, that the walking person who answered the telephone had never really noticed before.
And
[I]t never fails to amuse me at how easily the word “accessible” is tossed out. As you proved, that term is very much open to interpretation, especially when you aren’t the one disabled.
And
I too have found that in N.Y. most often restaurants say they are accessible and they really are not. Might just be one step but that’s enough to hinder movement.
And
It is amazing how little we think of these things until someone we love is humiliated and distressed at what is supposed to be a pleasant occasion-eating out at a lovely restaurant.(Read the responses here.)
These readers are all pointing out an issue that I'll be returning to in coming days: That "partial" access can end up being truly the same as "no access" -- and perhaps I'll get into a bit about why people complain so infrequently about the problem.
This issue of access is a true sleeper issue -- and it's only going to become bigger as society ages.
While Louisville has a larger proportion of newly built structures housing restaurants, structures that DO MEET access codes, in fact many of our most trendy dining spots, along the Frankfort Ave. and Bardstown Rd. corridors, exhibit the same problems Bruni writes about in Manhattan eateries.
We can do something about the problem here. But will we?
