Touching gesture for blind patrons

MUSGRAVE-BASED restaurant Country Bake has taken the first step in adjusting their restaurant to be more accommodating to the visually impaired by working with members of the blind community in Durban to create a Braille menu for their visually impaired patrons.

The manager at Country Bake, Shuaib Desai, says he hopes that other restaurants in Durban will follow their lead in making restaurants more accommodating to the visually impaired.

“We’re proud to be the first ones to do this here in Durban. We want to make everyone feel comfortable and at home at this store, and we want to bring people together. We are honoured to be able to help where we can. I want to offer my thanks to the members of the blind community who have included us in this to do this here in
Durban. We want to make everyone feel comfortable and at home at this store, and we want to bring people together. We are honoured to be able to help where we can. I want to offer my thanks to the members
of the blind community who have included us in this innovative step, and we are honoured to be the first restaurant to have a Braille menu.”

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Saffura Khan, from the South African National Zakáh Fund (SANZAF) – a faith-based, educational and socio-welfare organisation – said that the project to launch a Braille menu at Country Bake started in September.

“We were having breakfast here in September, and we put the idea to ‘Braille’ the menu to Shuaib because one of the things that blind people experience is that we are patrons at many of these venues, and we do not have access to vital information, such as menus, that allow us enjoy the full experience of eating out. Being able to read the Braille menu by ourselves makes it easy for us to make decisions about what we want.”
Khan noted that January is Braille Month, and including Braille in local spaces promotes social interaction between the visually impaired and the non-visually impaired.

“We want to encourage other restaurant proprietors to do the same because many of us are regular patrons at these local restaurants, and it would be nice if other restaurants considered putting their menus into
Braille.”

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Khan went on to explain that Braille is a system of raised dots that can be read with your fi ngers, and it comes in various languages. “In South Africa, we have various languages, and Braille is available in these languages, and it is so important that even the Holy Koran is available in Braille. We, as the visually impaired, hope to see more things [we encounter in] our everyday lives translated into Braille.”

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