A Seat at the Table: How Dining Sheds are Essential for Accessibility and Inclusivity

Dining sheds in New York City helped my wife Kathy and I to thrive. With Kathy being handicapped from a stroke and requiring a wheelchair, our lives have faced severe limitations. When our neighborhood restaurants built outdoor dining settings where we could eat comfortably in the fresh air, have chance encounters with friends or make new friends, it was a godsend. It was such a simple and meaningful improvement to our lives that we cherished.

Before New York City saw a boom of more than 13,000 dining sheds, the restaurants we had loved before her stroke became difficult to enter. They were much less comfortable for us: Spaces was tight and confined and maneuvering around tables could feel like doing a frustrating obstacle course. Outdoor dining sheds made these places accessible to us once more.

Sitting at our favorite eateries again because of the addition of dining sheds would go so far as to bring tears to Kathy's eyes. As a result of these dining sheds popping up during COVID, she was finally able to enjoy her favorite meals once more while taking in the people strolling and socializing along Atlantic Avenue, Court, Henry, and Smith Streets in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn.

She would repeatedly say "thank you" because the experience was so special for her. Frankly, I was stunned at her expression of great joy at just having a comfortable dining experience and being able to take in the goings-on of the world around us. For people like her with mobility issues, the outdoor dining sheds were a blessing.

My wish was to always have these places available, not only because they nurtured her soul and gave such energy and meaning to her life, but because they made our city's assets accessible to everyone.

Unfortunately, the dining sheds were taken down. And because of added constraints imposed on businesses who wish to keep them, there is little likelihood of them returning in their full form.

The Sheds Are Gone

Last month, after an extended absence, we returned to Cobble Hill to find that so much of what had allowed us to thrive in our neighborhood had been taken away. The dining sheds have been removed...

For us and for many like us, this is more than an inconvenience or disappointment, it's a tragedy.

New regulations made it illegal for the dining sheds to be up for half the year and during the other half, numerous rules and regulations have led to the majority of eateries completely giving up their sheds. It is simply no longer feasible to go through all the trouble of keeping them. And when restaurants do make the effort to bring the dining sheds back, the new size limitations eliminate many of the accessibility benefits we had seen. This removal of the social gathering hubs which added so much value to people's lives has been a great challenge for us to accept.

In fact, we can't accept it. We can't accept such a loss and such a hit to our quality of life and that of millions of other New Yorkers. So we are calling for the dining sheds to be brought back. They did not only offer a pleasant, beautiful, and enjoyable dining out experience to all New Yorkers, but they were essential amenities for those of us whose mobility is limited or those who are unable to be confined indoors with other people for reasons like compromised immune systems. They also make things more comfortable for a variety of other patrons, like children and people with pets.

Dining sheds are essential to accessibility and inclusivity, two values that our city claims to hold dear, and they should be brought back.

People with Disabilities

For people with disabilities, being confined in an indoor restaurant can be a great struggle. It is difficult to find a comfortable place to fit a wheelchair and it is challenging to maneuver it through the narrow pathways between tables. Outdoor dining sheds make things so much simpler — they give people with disabilities much more space to move and freedom to maneuver their mobility aids.

The benefit that dining sheds offer to people with disabilities doesn't stop at those who use wheelchairs. People experiencing a variety of psychological and physical difficulties find it more relaxed to be in an outdoor area than closed up indoors with little air and space, squeezed among a crowd of people and having to abide by stricter rules of behavior. The outdoors offers a more open and casual environment with fewer rules and restrictions. It allows people with a broader variety of needs to feel more at ease. It makes them feel more welcome to enjoy what the city has to offer.

Left: dancing and connecting near outdoor dining in Delray Beach I Right: at Cobble Hill Farmacy, a community gathering place for all, 24/7

Baby Carriages

Wheelchairs are not the only bulky mobility aid that we see regularly making their way along the streets of our cities. Carriages are essential for small children and it can be a struggle to figure out what to do with them inside enclosed dining establishments, especially more formal ones or ones that have very limited space, as is common in New York City.

Street dining makes things so much simpler. Parents simply scoot their carriages next to their table and forget about them. Children can sleep inside when they get tired of socializing, or jump out when they want to engage with mom and dad and take a bite of food. At the peak of dining shed popularity, outdoor dining areas were frequently dotted with baby carriages. Parents had the opportunity to get out of the house and re-engage with social life much more easily.

Children

It's hard to get children to sit still. Any parent will tell you that. There are just so many things to see and touch in the world that confining them to a small chair between four walls can be near impossible. Most parents' solution to this problem is to look for different distractions for their kids, to engage their attention long enough for the adults to finish their meal and conversation in peace. But what children want and need is to explore and experience the world around them. Outdoor dining sheds give more freedom to kids and families.

Outside, children aren't forced to sit in their chair for hours, be still, and stay quiet. They can run around, find other children to play with, explore their surroundings, climb things, meet people's pets, and experience their communities. This is not only more interesting, but it is also healthy for them as growing and developing little humans.

Pets

It isn't only children that have a hard time being quiet and sitting still indoors. Our beloved furry companions also find this a difficult and unpleasant challenge. For this reason, they often aren't welcome indoors at all. Many restaurants don't allow four-legged companions to cross their threshold. But what fun is that? When we go outdoors to walk our pets, sometimes we get hungry or want a refreshment. If we have to go all the way home to leave our fluffy friends behind so we can return to enjoy said treat, the whole day gets a little bit more difficult.

Outdoor dining removes this obstacle. People can sit and eat and their pets can be right beside them, waiting for a morsel to fall from the table so they can scoop it up eagerly. When they need to stretch their legs they can easily do so, and if they need a bathroom break, the nearest bush is just a few steps away. When restaurants have outdoor dining, pets can enjoy these places too and their owners can share the experience with their beloved companions.

Takeaways

Dining sheds opened up the city to everyone in a way nothing else has. They made it not only possible, but also enjoyable, for people with disabilities or other kinds of physical or mental limitations to enjoy the best NYC has to offer. Removing them means removing a big portion of those people's quality of life. In a very real sense, the removal and restriction of dining sheds has made the city less accessible and less inclusive.

It has alienated millions of people by confining them to indoor destinations and driving them away from the public realm. For this reason, among many others, we call for the return of New York's outdoor dining sheds. People with disabilities and mobility issues and families with small children and baby carriages are residents of New York just as much as anyone else, and they deserve to enjoy the city's great assets just as much as others do.