Brittany Dejean remembers well the first time she went to a restaurant with her father after he was paralyzed in a car accident. She was 13 or 14 years old.
“The waitress looked at me and said, ‘What does he want to eat?’” says Dejean, now a public speaker who specializes in getting people comfortable working with individuals with special needs. “I remember thinking, ‘That is so weird. Why is an adult asking me what my dad wants?’Then I realized she was uncomfortable. She wouldn’t really look at my dad.”
That kind of experience does not need to happen in your restaurant. There are ways to make your establishment welcoming to customers with special needs — something that is imperative to do from a humanitarian perspective, and makes good business sense, too.
Bonnie Holtzman, regional deputy director of supported employment at YAI, an organization that supports people with disabilities, notes that dining out is a favorite activity for many of the people with intellectual and developmental disabilities with whom she works.
“Going to restaurants is a big social outlet for them,” she says...