In her song “Raised on Robbery” Jonie Mitchell describes a man “sitting in the bar of the Empire Hotel, drinking for diversion and thinking for himself” while he watches a hockey game that he’s bet on. I thought about that song when I ate lunch with a wheel chair bound at a local restaurant. We had no trouble being seated; there were plenty of accessible tables. What we couldn’t do was see the three large flat screen TVs behind the bar because the bar area only had raised tables and raised booths.

Does the inability to sit in the bar or see a TV amount to discrimination against those with disabilities? It depends on how you look at the business of the restaurant. If the restaurant is only selling food and drink then a person with a mobility disability gets the same thing everyone else does – food and drink.  But if the restaurant is the experience of drinking and watching a hockey game the disabled person is out of luck. More