Access to Restaurants

Ensuring full access to your restaurant is one great way to expand your customer base. Individuals with disabilities control $175 billion in discretionary income. Millions of people with disabilities dine at restaurants regularly, and they often come with family members, friends, and colleagues! Older individuals also benefit from your restaurant's accessibility features.

Disability Etiquette Tips

1. Speak directly to the individual you are addressing, not to a companion or sign language interpreter. Never shout at a person. Speak in a normal tone of voice.
2. When you meet someone with a vision disability, always identify yourself and others who may be with you. If conversing in a group, remember to identify the person to whom you are speaking.
3. Listen attentively when talking with people who have difficulty speaking, and wait for them to finish. If necessary, ask short questions that require short answers or a nod of the head. Never pretend to understand; instead, repeat what you have understood and allow the person to respond.
4. Service animals are working animals, not pets. Do not pet, feed or distract them. 
5. If needed, describe people with disabilities using "person-first language" (e.g., a person who is blind, not a blind person). Avoid words/phrases like handicapped, victim, and confined to a wheelchair.

Practical Tips: Serving Customers with Disabilities
1. Make sure your staff is aware of your restaurant's level of accessibility and is trained to respond accurately to inquiries about accessibility. Keep these features on a typed list next to the phone and list them on your website.
2. Be prepared to utilize a variety of tools and methods to communicate with people with disabilities, including providing menus on cassette tape, Braille menus, picture menus, and training staff to read menus aloud or exchange notes with customers.
3. Welcome service animals into your establishment. Service animals assist people with all types of disabilities, including individuals who are blind, deaf, have epilepsy, use wheelchairs, and others.
4. Ensure accessible parking spots are clearly marked and maintained. Some people with disabilities choose to patronize a restaurant based on whether they can easily find accessible parking.
5. Improve access by ensuring there is a clear path-wide enough for a wheelchair-from the parking lot to all areas of the restaurant, including seating areas, restrooms, self-service counters, and emergency exits.
6. Make sure food service counters and everything in self-service areas (e.g., salad bars, buffets, condiment bars, soda machines) can be reached from a seated position.
7. If your restaurant has a website, make sure it is accessible and includes alt tags (text describing graphics) and/or a link to a text only version of your site.
8. Train staff in disability etiquette.
9. If making your restaurant structurally accessible is impossible, provide alternatives such as curb-side service and home delivery for people with disabilities who cannot eat in the restaurant.
10.Remember people with disabilities are your customers!
11.Utilize available federal tax incentives to make your restaurant more accessible and to hire employees with disabilities. Many states also offer state tax credits.
12.To learn more about serving customers with disabilities, utilize this U.S. Department of Justice online training: www.ada.gov/reachingout/intro1.htm
13.Get training from a knowledgeable resource, like the DBTAC: Regional ADA Centers; (800) 949-4232 V/TTY or www.adata.org for more information.

Areas to Assess for Accessibility
Parking lot, entrance, reception area
Restrooms, meeting rooms
Elevators, hallways, aisles
Counters, bars, self-service areas
Seating, tables
Communication elements
Emergency egress
All of these areas have specific accessibility requirements. The DBTAC: Regional ADA Centers (Disability and Business Technical Assistance Centers) are available to discuss these requirements, provide training, and answer your other ADA questions.

This brochure also includes illustrations of four international symbols of access (the wheelchair symbol, the symbol for interpreter services, the symbol for Braille, and the symbol for hearing assistance), as well as the signs (American Sign Language) for the following words: 
Name
Smoking
Food
Drink
Understand
Bathroom
Water
Correct
Write
Help
Where
What
Welcome
Thank you

This brochure is not intended to provide legal guidance. For more information about the Americans with Disabilities Act and the hospitality industry, contact the DBTAC: Regional ADA Centers (Disability and Business Technical Assistance Centers): (800) 949-4232 V/TTY or www.adata.org. 
Supported by NIDRR grant #H133D010212.