Local entrepreneur and vlogger, Siti Aira Sharina or Aira Meor, was left disappointed with her most recent experience at the KFC she attends often.
Meor, a member of the dead community in Malaysia, was a repeat visitor to this specific restaurant and was used to communicating with the staff through her own unique way.
She described her regular routine to The Rakyat Post: going to the drive-thru section of the restaurant and heading straight to the window rub by an actual person instead of talking through a screen – which obviously was impossible for her to do.
“I would write my order down or point to the menu. The staff were nice and understood that I was Deaf,” signed Meor in her TikTok video confession which has garnered enormous attention on social media.
Unfortunately , this time, Meor claimed that staff at the KFC refused to serve her in this manner.
Meor said she had spent a great deal of time organizing photos on her phone of the items she wanted to order from the menu, to make the interaction easier for the staff. Instead, she claimed she was denied service and told to go into the restaurant to purchase her food.
“Suddenly a different staff asked me to go to the counter inside KFC,” she noted.
Feeling disappointed, Meor said that she simply drove off hungry without placing her order.
In her video, Meor stated that she did not want to make a big to-do out of the encounter, so she didn’t mention the location of this particular KFC.
She only asked that KFC’s management make improvements to include amenities to make it easier for persons with disabilities (OKU – a Malaysian acronym meaning people with disabilities) like herself to purchase a meal.
Followers of her accounts joined in with her frustration, asking for KFC as well as other establishments to make life easier for the country’s OKU community.
To understand how people like Meor make their way through their daily lives, watch her TikTok videos or her YouTube channel where she describes her experiences as an OKU in Malaysia.
Earlier this year, Senator Ras Adiba Radzi, Malaysia’s parliamentary OKU representative, was featured in a VICE documentary commenting on how the country still has many steps to take in both protecting and empowering our OKU community.
“People’s mindsets have to change, discrimination has to be reduced, and people need to be able to look at us and speak to us like we are just like everybody else. I aspire to see Malaysia be a disabled-friendly country,” said Senator Ras Adiba Radzi via VICE News.
