Yesterday I was looking up Japanese restaurants in the city since my friend, who recently moved to town from California (where he claims they have much better Japanese), wanted to go. Raw looked good so I called them. It went like this:
Me: Is your building wheelchair accessible?
Raw: It depends. Is the wheelchair light?
That would be a NO. She proceeded to tell me that there are 3 stairs to get inside. That’s doable for someone like me with a light manual chair and strong friends, but should not, under any circumstances, be considered accessible.
I plan on writing them a letter to let them know that, for future reference, they should not consider themselves accessible. I’ll throw in the ADA Guide for Small Businesses (PDF) and the ADA Tax Incentives Packet for good measure, in the (probably vain) hope that they’ll decide to make their restaurant accessible for everyone.
By the way, we ended up going to Haru in Old City instead. It was accessible: no stairs at the entry and though they have booths, there are lots of tables too (I’m not sure about the bathrooms). My watermelon mojito and assortment of vegetable sushi hit the spot, and no one had to carry me anywhere.
Posted in accessibility, philadelphia, restaurants
