Marti Stelling

A Harrogate café is set to launch a braille menu after raising £3,000 for a charity supporting people with a genetic condition causing visual impairment.

Crema Coffee, a small café near the Valley Gardens in Harrogate, is calling on other businesses to become more inclusive of people with sight loss.

The café opened last November and is rated the ninth best place for quick bites in Harrogate.

Director Simon Somerville-Frost said: “We used to have another shop on the outskirts of Harrogate which was more of a community café. We did different incentives like paying-forward for coffee for people who couldn’t afford it after the Covid pandemic. We then moved into a shop in the town centre and I was still looking at different ways we could give back to the community.

“We had some customers with children who have Usher Syndrome, a condition which causes hearing loss and visual impairment. Becoming friends with them made me more aware of how different accessibility needs can be met. It was from there that I started looking into things such as a braille menu.”

Braille is a form of written language for blind people which represents characters by patterns of raised dots that are felt with the fingertips. In the UK more than 30,000 people use braille to help them communicate.

Simon said: “There are a lot of restaurants and coffee shops in Harrogate which aren’t accessible to the specific needs of people with sight loss. We have customers who are partially sighted who say they have never been offered a braille menu anywhere in Harrogate.

“We want to help other businesses to become more inclusive by offering a braille menu. However, the process of getting our own hasn’t been easy as there aren’t many people making them.”

As the shop is a small, 40-seater café, they only needed one braille menu. They found most companies printing braille either required a bigger print run or they only print braille strips which would require the café to put the menu together themselves.

Eventually the café found somebody who was willing to put a full braille menu together.

Simon said: “It’s so important for blind or partially sighted people to have the independence of reading the menu for themselves. I am always happy to read and describe the menu items to people but they should have the freedom of choice to do it for themselves.

“In the future we will be considering accessibility in other aspects of our shop, such as having braille signs on the walls. I am happy to work with other local businesses to help them find solutions and make Harrogate a more accessible place.

“I want people to feel valued when they come into the coffee shop. Businesses run on word of mouth and it’s not just about money for me, it’s about making people feel welcome.”

Published in the Yorkshire Post