A blind Seattle artist and his guide dog were kicked out of a Seattle restaurant when one of the workers accused the customer of faking his blindness.
Paul Castle, who is legally blind, claimed he entered the unnamed eatery with his service dog, Mr. Maple, but was instantly met by the wary worker.
“I walked in with my guide dog, Mr. Maple, and immediately somebody rushed up to me and said ‘no pets allowed, only service dogs,’” Castle said in a TikTok post on May 7.
“I said ‘It’s ok, 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 off the pooch’s designated harness to the worker.
Castle told the employee he was blind, but the man wasn’t buying the artist’s story.
“‘You don’t look blind,” the man stated before Castle explained that “a lot of people in the blind community still have some functional vision.”
“You’re looking right at me,” “Yes but it’s like I have a pinhole of vision, it is all I can see.”
Castle described his vision as “sort of like looking through a straw. I have no peripheral vision, the rest of my visual field is full of static.”
“Listen, this isn’t my first rodeo,” the man reportedly said.
Castle offered to return to the establishment with Mr. Maple’s paperwork, but the employee threatened to call the police if they stepped “foot back in this restaurant.”
Castle and his husband Matthew run the “Matthew and Paul” TikTok account, which has garnered over 2.1 million followers, and was created to give viewers an inside look at the lives of blind people while also spreading awareness about blindness.
“I was speechless, I was shaking,” Castle told the outlet. “I was really upset and disappointed.”
“When I encounter a situation like this where I’m fully rejected not only for my dog, but because my own disability wasn’t believed, it makes me really sad on top of all the struggles that I already kind of deal with,” Castle said.
Federal law prohibits private businesses that provide goods or services from discriminating against individuals with disabilities including those that need service animals.
The goal 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 disallows businesses from asking for documentation, and animals do not have to wear a vest or harness that indicates they are trained for a specific service.
According to the ADA, To help separate service animals from pets, a business may ask two questions when a person with an animal enters a place of public accommodation:
- Is the animal required because of a disability?
- What work or task has the animal been trained to perform?
Castle, who is not taking any legal action, didn’t name the restaurant where he was thrown 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, reached out to the restaurant where he talked to the manager who was sincerely apologetic and promised to better train the employees.
