CLEVELAND — An Ohio-based restaurant is opening its eyes to the challenges of customers who can’t see. 

TownHall offers an inclusive menu for all sorts of diets, but if you can’t see the selections, it’s more difficult to decide what to order. So, they’re now bringing braille menus to the table. 

What You Need To Know

  • TownHall wanted to be more inclusive, so they launched braille menus that are right at the table

  • Cathy Javorsky lost her eyesight suddenly in 1980 and it took her three years to learn braille

  • The restaurant hopes other food places will follow suit to better accommodate customers like Javorsky

It took Cathy Javorsky three years to learn braille after she lost her sight in 1980.

“Totally unexpected,” she said. “Had kids, I drove, and then all of a sudden — in August I was fine. In September, I was in the hospital. That was it. By the end of the year, blind.”

She learned to read the raised dots at the Cleveland Sight Center as a way to increase her independence. 

“I think we take so much for granted in our lives,” Javorsky said. “Until you get it taken away, you don’t realize it.”

But not every restaurant is so accommodating when she walks in with her guide dog Rogue by her side. 

“Sometimes they’ll see me walking in with the dog and you hear this fluttering around, and you hear them looking,” she said. “And I think they’re looking for that braille menu that they don’t use too often.”

“When we opened TownHall, it was a place for everyone,” said Kayla Barnes, the director of marketing for the restaurant’s parent company, Ethos Hospitality Group. “So, in order to be a place for everyone, you have to make sure that everything is accessible.”

Adding the specially-printed menus has received a positive response for the restaurant. 

“To be honest, we hope that other restaurants see this and a light goes off in their head, as well, and they also offer these menus,” said Barnes. 

Eric Duffy’s been blind since birth and has ordered off the Braille menu at TownHall’s Columbus location. 

“I think what it says to us as blind people is that, you know, the restaurants value us as much as they value their sighted customers,” said Duffy.

Back at their Cleveland location, Javorsky agreed. 

“You kinda feel like you belong, like you’re with the group here,” she said. “I mean, I can’t see anything. I can hear everybody and that. But it makes you feel like, ‘Oh, I know what’s going on, too, ‘cause I know what salads they have.’”

TownHall is also in the process of increasing accessibility of its website and mobile app for all customers.