MKs temporarily blinded, deafened in disability-awareness lunch

Lawmakers in the Knesset eat an unusual lunch today in the parliament’s cafeteria.

In each of three courses, the 12 participating MKs had one sense blacked out in order to experience the course as a handicapped person might. Their eyes are covered during the appetizer, loud music played in their ears during the main course and large, unwieldy gloves are placed on their hands for dessert.

Wheelchair-bound Meretz MK Ilan Gilon spearheaded the initiative, together with the handicapped-rights NGO Access Israel and the Knesset’s director general Ronen Plot.

“The experience allows us for a moment to enter the shoes of people for whom simple activities like eating and drinking are daily challenges,” says Gilon.

Yesh Atid MK Karin Elharar, who suffers from muscular dystrophy, praised the Knesset’s chief executive, Plot, for ensuring that the parliament building is accessible.

“Accessibility is not a slogan, but a way of life, and he does everything to make the Knesset accessible to everyone,” Elharar says in an unusual moment of cross-party praise, as Plot is a Likud appointee.