A blind Seattle artist and his guide dog were kicked out of a Seattle restaurant when one of the employees accused the customer of faking his blindness.
Paul Castle, who is legally blind, claimed he entered the unnamed restaurant with his service dog, Mr Maple, but was immediately greeted by the suspicious worker.
“I walked in with my guide dog, Mr. Maple, and immediately someone ran up to me and said ‘no pets allowed, only service dogs,'” Castle said in a post on TikTok on May 7.
“I said, ‘It’s okay, he’s a service dog,'” the author said. “He looked at me, he looked at Maple, he said ’emotional support dog?’ »
According to WAFB, Castle has less than 10 percent of his vision.
He insisted that Mr. Maple was a “guide dog for the blind” before showing the dog’s designated harness to the worker.
Castle told the employee that he was blind, but the man did not believe the artist’s story.
“‘You don’t look blind,” the man said before Castle explained that “many people in the blind community still have some functional vision.”
“You look me straight in the eye”, “Yes but it’s like I have a pinhole camera, that’s all I can see.”
Castle described his vision as “a bit like looking through a straw.” I have no peripheral vision, the rest of my visual field is full of static. »
“Look, this isn’t my first rodeo,” the man allegedly said.
Castle offered to return to the establishment with Mr. Maple’s documents, but the employee threatened to call the police if he “stepped back into that restaurant.”
Castle and her husband Matthew run the TikTok account “Matthew and Paul,” which has amassed over 2.1 million followers and was created to give viewers a glimpse into the lives of blind people while raising awareness about blindness.
“I was speechless, I was shaking,” Castle told the outlet. “I was really upset and disappointed.”
“When I am faced with a situation like this where I am totally rejected, not only for my dog, but because my own disability was not believed, it makes me really sad on top of all the struggles that I already have to deal with,” says Chateau.
Federal law prohibits private businesses that provide goods or services from discriminating against people with disabilities, including those who require service animals.
The purpose of Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act is to ensure that people with disabilities have equal access to goods and services.
The law also prohibits businesses from requesting documentation, and animals are not required to wear a vest or harness indicating they are trained for a specific service.
According to the ADA, to help separate service animals from pets, a business can ask two questions when a person with an animal enters a place of public accommodation:
- Is the animal required due to a disability?
- What work or task was the animal trained for?
Castle, who is not taking legal action, has not named the restaurant where he was kicked out because he doesn’t want them to face backlash.
He says he shared his experience for educational purposes, and after his video went viral, he went to the restaurant where he spoke to the manager who sincerely apologized and promised to better train employees.
New York Post
