Beyond Braille

Last year marked the 30th anniversary of the landmark Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), the far-reaching law that prohibits discrimination based on disability. Included in the requirement for businesses to provide reasonable accommodations to employees and the public, is the need for signage. 

Sign companies and other display graphics providers who produce, or would like to produce, wayfinding and other interior graphics for public buildings need to understand what requirements are necessary to comply with the signage aspects of the ADA, in much the same way that anyone producing exterior signage needs to understand how to comply with a particular state or municipality’s sign codes. After all, a non-ADA-compliant sign can subject the sign owner with a fine—$75,000 as of this writing—and that’s not even including any litigation that may result from non-ADA-compliant signage. 

What Is ADA-Compliant Signage?

When we refer to “ADA signage,” to what are we specifically referring? 

Perhaps the first thing that comes to mind is braille on interior wayfinding signs, but it does encompass much more.

“The first concept that I’d keep in mind is that the ADA doesn’t apply only to groups like the fully blind or the deaf or wheelchair-bound,” said Kenny Peskin, director of industry programs for the International Sign Association (ISA). “ADA signage is meant to work for individuals having a wide range of conditions and includes those who may have diminished capabilities—not necessarily a total loss, but a reduction in or inability to use all the senses.”

For example, in addition to the blind, ADA signs are also designed to aid individuals with impaired visual capacity, such as those who have macular degeneration or other types of reduced visual acuity.

“Among the other regulations that apply to ADA signage, there are requirements for color contrast, surface glare and reflectivity, and the standardization of symbols, just to name a few,” Peskin said. 

“There are all sorts of different things that are part of [the ADA], whether it’s handicapped accessibility, such as ramps or bathroom accessibility,” said Dan Bruk, president of Image360 Brookfield (Wis.).

Bruk’s Image360 franchise serves as a signage wholesaler for Alliance Franchise Brands’ network, as well as independent sign shops or even other sign franchises and direct customers. One of his specialties is ADA-compliant signage.

Braille and raised copy on interior signage are the emblematic examples of ADA-compliant signage.

“It’s tactile, things that people are going to touch,” added Bruk. “Typically, on wayfinding, arrows or other directional information such as ‘restrooms down the hall’ are included, or you might have room signage that says ‘maximum capacity of 55 people.’”

Ultimately, most interior signage identifies what is behind a door.

“This is a closet, vs. electrical or mechanical or a conference room,” Bruk said.

It’s information useful to just about anyone wandering a particular premises. 

Within the ADA regulations, there are sign elements that are required be in raised copy and braille and other things that don’t. For example, a rest room sign needs to have “Men,” “Women,” “Gender Neutral” in raised copy and braille, but the pictogram doesn’t need to be, although some locations do create the male/female/gender-neutral figures in relief as a courtesy. The same goes with wheelchair-accessibility. By the way, we say “raised copy and braille” because not all blind people read braille, and many prefer to simply tactilely sense raised lettering. Thus, ADA-compliant signage requires both.

The Devil’s in the Details

The regulations get very specific and spell out in great detail the size that lettering needs to be, the height of the raised lettering, the proximity of the braille translation to the English text and more. And this is not just an academic or typographic issue—fines for non-compliance start at $75,000 for the first incident, and get progressively steeper if the issue is not corrected. (And, again, this is in addition to any kind of litigation that may result.) 

The most basic design requirement is that copy needs to be in a sans serif typeface and in all caps.

“What you need to keep in mind is people are going to be touching these things—that’s how they’re going to be reading it,” said Bruk. “They want it as simple as possible.”

Other requirements include:

• The minimum character height is 5/8 inch. 
• The maximum height is two inches. 
• The distance between the characters (kerning) needs to be a minimum of 1/8 inch.
• The thickness of a stroke needs to be 0.15 of the overall height. 
• The height of the raised copy needs to be 1/32 inch. 
• Copy needs to be 3/8 inch from each side or the top or the bottom. 
• The braille needs to be 3/8 inch below the English copy, and the bottom of the braille needs to have a 3/8 inch minimum distance from the bottom of the sign. 
• The braille beads need to be domed (see sidebar “Tools of the Trade”).

There are more, but you get the idea, and complete guides to specifications can be easily found online. After all, these are important considerations when the visually impaired are visiting unfamiliar locations.

“Any user who’s encountering either raised letters or braille dots needs to have a very consistent and repeatable experience in trying to read those signs,” said Peskin. 

Then there are requirements as to materials that can be used as substrates (they need to be non-glare) and the color contrast (there must be strong contrast so lettering doesn’t blend into the background—navy blue on a dark gray background is a no-no) as well as how and where the sign is mounted. 

“You have to follow regulations and be thoughtful about signage placement,” said Bruk. “I’ve walked into buildings where the braille signs are on the door. Well, if the door is open and a visually impaired person is coming up to it, they won't know what’s behind the door.”

Signage that indicates what a particular door leads to needs to be outside of the room on the wall beside the door. It needs to be low enough where someone who’s in a wheelchair can reach it, but it also can’t be too low. 

A challenge arises when creative architecture affects where signs can go. Say a conference room has glass windows on either side of the door. The sign can’t go on the door. So does it go on the window? Yes. The sign is affixed—at the correct height—to the window, often with double-sided tape. But that raises an aesthetic issue.

“Sitting inside the conference room, looking out, you can see the tape and the back of the sign,” said Bruk. “To remedy this challenge, I'll adhere a courtesy panel behind the sign. It’s usually blank just to cover up the tape and adhesive, however it’s being adhered to the glass.” 

And then there are special conditions that a particular facility may present.

“We’ve provided ADA signage for prisons and behavioral health clinics that require special considerations,” said Bruk. “When there is concern for someone who may harm themselves or others, signage must not be able to be dismantled or removed for ill intent.”

There is a material called no pick caulk that provides such a tight and permanent seal that the signage cannot be removed without special tools. As is true in all ADA signage situations, you have to know the facility and their needs to provide the best solutions.

Code Comfort

If you are familiar with municipal sign codes regulating exterior signage, you know that some of the most important provisions are found at the local rather than the federal or even the state level—and can vary from municipality to municipality. This is also true of ADA signage. 

The ADA standards for accessible design were first published in 1991 and were revised in 2010. What’s important about this for signmakers, said Peskin, is that “the key provisions that folks need to be concerned about aren’t so much from the federal law, which only gets adjusted very infrequently and may not have the level of specific detail that a fabricator or designer would use. The more important way to figure out how to comply with the ADA requirements is by consulting your local version of the international building code.”

Specifically, that is the ICC A117.1 standard: “Accessible and Usable Buildings and Facilities.” ISA served on the committee to develop that set of regulations, which is usually updated on a three-year cycle.

“But sometimes things take a little longer,” said Peskin, who was part of that development process. “The most recent edition that was released was the 2017 version, but there is a 2009 and earlier versions out there. That accessible building standard is where people will find what is specifically relevant to designing and installing code-compliant ADA signage.”

(A good place to start is at https://codes.iccsafe.org/content/document.)

“Anyone who wants to do wayfinding should look at not only the national law, but also go to whatever the local building code would be,” said Peskin.

This also means that any shop that serves more than one locality needs to be conversant in local variants of the building code that pertain to signage.

“I’m based in Virginia, and right near Maryland and the District of Columbia,” added Peskin. “It’s entirely possible that all three jurisdictions might have three different versions of the building code.”

Now, this is not to say that there are going to be dramatic changes from one place to another, or when a given municipality—or even the Feds—revise the regulations. Most of the changes that get debated and often adopted involve new technologies, new kinds of facilities, or new ways of people navigating the world.

“One of the ones that we’re dealing with right now is a standard requirement in accessible building codes in the UK or Australia for something known as ‘accessible changing stations,’” said Peskin.

This is something that’s beyond an accessible lavatory—it’s basically a toilet and change facility that would cater to users with a high support need or to accommodate two adults and have additional space or specialized equipment, like a hoist or a particular kind of changing table that would allow somebody who may be in a wheelchair or suffer from muscular dystrophy or multiple sclerosis to use a toilet or change clothes in a secure and comfortable environment. Where this becomes important for signage is that, once the decision is made to require these kinds of facilities, what are they called and how are they visually indicated in a standardized manner? 

Other changes can involve dealing with new technologies like electronic messaging centers and other forms of digital signage, as well as things like ATMs, ticketing machines for transit systems, and so forth, where technologies are ever-changing. 

In those cases where a local code has been revised in a way that impacts signage, very often preexisting signs are exempt from the change, but when a facility does a renovation, rebrand or other major construction, their signage will need to be brought up to the new regulations. 

And then there is the new breed of signage that emerged last year: COVID signage, some of which would technically fall afoul of certain building codes but are exempt due to emergency provisions that were enacted during the pandemic. As things get back to normal, those emergency provisions will expire.

“One example of this is that there are rules under a particular UL standard—essentially for fire doors and elevators and things like that,” said Peskin.

There are reasons why a building owner may want to display a message or hang a poster on or wrap things like elevator doors, but that can run afoul of the particular standards that are designed to ensure that something is fireproof. There are standards, for example, within the licensing of healthcare facilities that depend on compliance with the doors having a particular fire rating. Putting signage on those doors—even if it’s COVID-related—can moot that rating. 

Sometimes, however, very basic specs can differ from place to place.

“Where you see those differences, typically, are in stairwells,” said Bruk. “Let's say it’s floor five—for the actual ‘5,’ some municipalities may have a minimum height of six inches for that character. Others may need it to be a minimum height of 12 inches. Some have certain verbiage that they need to use.”

Some municipalities may also require certain kinds of wayfinding to be photoluminescent, so if the lights go out, signage and exit routes can still be seen. 

“You need to make sure you’re talking to the fire marshal or other regulators within the community to confirm the requirements for these things,” said Bruk. 

Call Before You Dig

As you can tell, there are a lot of considerations, details and risks when doing ADA-compliant signage and while there are tremendous opportunities—especially as the construction market and the demand for signage increases post-COVID—it is imperative that potential signmakers understand all these considerations, details and risks.

“People really need to understand what they’re getting into," Bruk said, "or have somebody that they know and they trust that can guide them along the way.”

The Tools of the Trade

There are a few ways of making ADA-compliant signage (aka braille and raised lettering). The most basic tool is a router. Holes are drilled into the substrate and then round beads get inserted into those holes. (This process is called “raster braille.”) In the case of the raised copy and any pictograms, the router cuts out the desired shapes. 

“Another piece of technology we use quite a bit is a laser engraver,” said Dan Bruk, President of Image360 Brookfield (Wis.). 

Flatbed UV printers can also be used to create raised lettering and braille. Some systems do it by repeatedly layering the ink until it is the desired height. Others can do this in one pass.

“We own one from a company called Direct Color Systems,” said Bruk. “It lays all the ink down in one pass, so you don’t have to go back and forth repeatedly, saving on machine time. Once finished, it’s cured with UV light. In some ways, it’s kind of like an Easy Bake Oven.”

Regardless of the specific technology used to produce or print braille, the dots need to be domed or, essentially, have a semicircular top, so as to eliminate sharp edges. Not all printing processes will produce a braille dot with a domed top—one more fine detail to ensure you are in compliance with. 

All images courtesy Alliance Franchise Brands/Image360.