Pearle Vision

Denied service. After checking with them one or two weeks earlier, with the staff having to phone the optometrist to get some wheelchair accessibility information, as the examining room was locked, the optometrist told them that there wouldn’t be a problem. I finally booked the appointment, we wheeled down to their office where the optometrist quickly refused to serve me-I’m a non-​ambulatory wheelchair user. The optometrist refused to allow me to take a look at the examination room.
You see, I cannot transfer manually on my own, nor should I have to as it would be a chair to chair transfer. She refused to help with the transfer, and did not have a transfer lift, and as she ushered me out of the store she continually apologized while mutturing about liability. First off, I didn’t make an appointment to be apologized to, I just wanted to get my eyes checked, as I am legally entitled to:
Human Rights Code
Discrimination in accommodation, service and facility
8 (1) A person must not, without a bona fide and reasonable justification,
(a) deny to a person or class of persons any accommodation, service or facility customarily available to the public, or
(b) discriminate against a person or class of persons regarding any accommodation, service or facility customarily available to the public because of the race, colour, ancestry, place of origin, religion, marital status, family status, physical or mental disability, sex, sexual orientation or age of that person or class of persons.
I do agree with her comments on liability, which is one of my main selling points for medical services across the board to join the 21^st-​century and provide access to all. You see, to provide transfers manually not only risks the patient, but also those– Employees, or in the case of my current dentist, other clients-​who assist with the manual transfer. Due to running a safe shop and not wanting to be in contravention of the WCB act, I don’t allow my caregivers to participate in manual transfers other than light duty assistance, such as moving my feet. Denying service is not the appropriate action to take. So many people who supposedly should know better resist any change, even to comply with the law.
It all turned out to be unnecessary anyway. I’ll tell you why… I went across the mall to the Ironwood Optical Center and was told by the optometrist there that it would be no problem. I recall that a lot of the instruments were mounted to the back of the chair-​why they can’t be mounted on the wall I don’t know-​but he was going to have me park my wheelchair in front of the examination chair, which would make me a couple feet closer to the charts than normal. The solution, figure out the prescription and then use some mathematics to calculate the revised prescription taking into account that I was 2 feet closer. Now it’s starting to look like the offending optometrist was just lazy.