Disability is not Inability

Sarova Panafric Adjustment Experience:

The Sarova Panafric was host to a unique conference in the month of May 2005 that saw one of the most extensive disability friendly voluntary adjustment by the private sector in Kenyan history.

About 350 delegates were attending the Africa Blindness Forum believed to be the largest of its kind held in Nairobi in recent history. The theme of the conference is social inclusion and the topics include Education, training, employment and Sports.

The preparations for the conference involved a complete makeover of the Hotel. there was a training on the staff by the Kenya Union of the Blind on the needs and culture of the blind. Serving patrons who have visual impairments is an interesting departure from the traditional skills taught to our hospitality graduates even of the best of the five star hotels in developing countries.

The training was a fundamental in the sense that it enabled the management of the Hotel to make specific guidelines on how adjustments will be made both for process and for attitudes. The staff especiualy needed for example to know that serving a person with special visual needs on a table implied specific directions on where the spoon fork and knife are.

A Hotel adjustment in would be a deliberate change in the architecture of a hotel to enable access by person with visual impairments that may otherwise significantly deny functional access to hotel services.

It starts with how we choose the menu. What are we having? A buffet has its challenges for example especially if its food is dispalyed indoors and space is limited, as it were in most hotels. Hotels built in space limited areas may have to use lifts more than stairs to handle gradience.

disabilitykenya.