It's Saturday night.You have your heart set on a sushi dinner at this chic new restaurant. But it doesn't work out. You settle for a European place, but the plan falls through again, and you're left weighing unattractive back-ups. By this time, you've forgotten what cuisine you were craving when the night began. By this time, any place that isn't inaccessible or downright hostile towards your wheelchair-bound self will do.
Step into the life of disability activist Virali Modi, for whom such casual rejections have been an everyday affair, a natural extension of being a youngster with an appetite for fun and a spinal chord injury. "It's a challenge I've had to negotiate time and again, so when accessible tourism platform Enable Travel decided to audit high rated Mumbai restaurants which claim to be wheel-chair accessible on their websites, I joined forces," says the 26-year-old, who over the months of May and July, visited 25 restaurants of varied locations, cuisine and market positioning. Only five were equipped with ramp — the basic requirement for a disabled-friendly eatery.
The dismal findings emerged in time for Modi and her fellow activists to launch the campaign #RampMyRestaurant on World Tourism Day (September 27), kicking off with an online petition addressed to National Restaurant Association of India, Ministry of Tourism India and the Ministry of Social Welfare And Development. "We also hope to rope in Riyaaz Amlani, CEO of the Impresario group, which covers wide reach restaurants/pubs like Social, Smoke House Deli, or Salt Water Cafe. "I have so many disabled friends who've just given up on dining out, because who wants to go through the indignity of being told 'hum risk kyun le?'" she reasons, referring to the untrained hospitality staff who, in the absence of a ramp, often refuse to carry the wheel-chair bound patron through an awkward entrance. And at places where one does manage to be wheeled/carried in, cramped loos — or worse, completely inaccessible ones — can be counted upon to tar the experience.
"A portable ramp is the first step," insists Modi, acknowledging that the weight of a person on an electric wheelchair might prove too much for even an willing aid. A ramp, of course, is only instrumental in the initial step of entering the eatery. Modi lists other changes restaurants can bring about in their infrastructure to include "the 16 per cent of India's population with locomotor disabilities, waiting to create a great new customer base".
What can help
- Ground floor restaurants
- Tables/seating arrangement with sufficient leg space
- Spacious washrooms and toilets
- Grab bars on walls
- Enough room to navigate wheelchairs around the restaurant
Modi refrains from naming the popular restaurants that let her down, "two of them even denying entry", because according to her, harsh criticism isn't the answer to this "unintentional ignorance" that makes wholesome dining experiences rare for her tribe. "Right now, we're not asking for much. Let's start with the portable ramp, which doesn't even change a restaurant's existing infrastructure. The rest will follow," she urges. Patient activism, Modi seems to believe, will someday ensure that people like her don't have to hold their bladder and their breath while stepping out for a fun meal.
