Hong Kong employers could breach the law if they do not provide training and education to staff on serving people with disabilities, the chairperson of the city’s equality watchdog has said.
Linda Lam, the head of the Equal Opportunities Commisssion (EOC), was responding in a Commercial Radio show on Friday to an incident last week in which a Paralympics athlete was turned away by a restaurant because of her wheelchair.
She said that if staff unreasonably refuse service to somebody on the basis of their disability, that could be illegal under the Disability Discrimination Ordinance. At the same time, their employer may have “vicarious responsibility” – a type of liability where one party is held responsible for the actions of another.
“We hope [this incident] can remind employers that they must… increase staff awareness and training, so that they can have a reasonable justification… if staff breach the law, they [bosses] can have a defence,” Lam said in Cantonese.
Lam’s comments came amid discussion about accessibility in Hong Kong restaurants, after boccia player Ho Yuen-kai’s social media post about being turned away from a restaurant due to her wheelchair went viral.
In her Threads post last Tuesday, Ho said she had tried to visit a Thai restaurant in Causeway Bay, called Ayutthaya, for dinner. But waiters told her there was no space for her wheelchair and it would obstruct others.
Ho, who won two medals at the Paris Paralympics, said the restaurant had a wide entrance and was not crowded at the time.
The restaurant’s director later called Ho to apologise and assured her the restaurant did not intend to discriminate. The director, Kenneth Ng, told HKFP that the waiters’ experience of serving people with disabilities was insufficient and a lack of training was to blame.
Ho accepted the restaurant’s apology and did not file a complaint to the EOC.
Speaking on the radio show on Friday, Lam said the “unfortunate” incident had helped to raise public awareness about the need for inclusivity in the community. The EOC is also reaching out to industry heads on how to support employers in boosting training for workers, she said.
She added that if a restaurant is really unable to accommodate a wheelchair user, for example because its entrance was too narrow or there was not enough space in the restaurant, staff should explain this to the customer “politely” and not say anything hurtful.
Under the city’s Disability Discrimination Ordinance, it is illegal to discriminate on the grounds of disability without “reasonable justification,” such as demonstrating “that providing such service would constitute unjustifiable hardship to the service provider.”
