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Why braille appears on signs, lifts and medicine boxes
The braille you see in public is governed by specific rules about height, spacing and placement.
Signage is regulated, not decorative
Braille on public signage is usually there because law requires it. Rules such as the Americans with Disabilities Act in the United States and EN 301 549 in Europe specify not just that braille is present but its dot height, dot spacing, cell spacing and position relative to the printed text. A sign with correct-looking but incorrectly spaced braille fails those standards and is unreadable in practice.
Signage usually uses Grade 2
Public signage in English-speaking countries generally uses contracted Grade 2 braille, and it is normally set below the corresponding printed text so a reader can find it by feel in a predictable place.
Medicine packaging
In the European Union, the name and strength of a medicine must appear in braille on the carton. This is a safety requirement rather than a courtesy: it is what lets someone identify a box of tablets by touch without depending on anyone else.
Lift buttons and handrails
Floor numbers beside lift buttons are one of the most common places people first encounter braille. Numbers there take the number sign followed by the letter that stands for the digit — which is why the button for floor 1 reads as the number sign plus the letter a.