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Why braille appears on signs, lifts and medicine boxes
The ADA sets signage braille to the thousandth of an inch. The dimensions, the Grade 2 requirement, and the capital-sign rule most signs get wrong.
Signage is regulated, not decorative
Braille on public signage is usually there because law requires it, and the law is specific. In the United States the 2010 ADA Standards for Accessible Design set the geometry in a table: a dot base 0.059 to 0.063 inches across, a dot 0.025 to 0.037 inches high, dots within a cell 0.090 to 0.100 inches apart centre to centre, and corresponding dots in the next cell along 0.241 to 0.300 inches apart. Cells on the line below sit 0.395 to 0.400 inches down. Dots must be domed or rounded rather than flat-topped. A sign whose braille looks right but is spaced outside those ranges does not meet the standard, and a finger reading across it cannot resolve the cells. The full table, with tolerances and the clause behind each figure, is set out separately.
Signage usually uses Grade 2
The ADA standards require it outright: signage braille “shall be contracted (Grade 2)”. So contracted braille is not a stylistic choice on an American sign, it is the specification — which is what the Grade 2 setting in the translator produces. The braille goes below the corresponding text, below all of it where the text runs to several lines, and at least 3/8 inch clear of any other raised character, border or decoration.
The capital-sign mistake
Raised text on an ADA sign must be uppercase, but the braille under it must not copy that. The standard allows the capital indicator only before the first word of a sentence, a proper noun or name, an individual letter, an initial or an acronym — so a door reading STAFF ONLY in raised letters takes no capital signs at all in the braille beneath. Marking every letter as a capital is one of the commonest faults on signs that were otherwise made carefully — and it is measurable: STAFF ONLY set in capitals spends four cells it is not allowed to spend.
Medicine packaging
In the European Union the requirement comes from Article 56a of Directive 2001/83/EC: the name of the medicinal product must also be expressed in braille on the packaging. The name it points at is the one defined in Article 54(a) — the product name followed by its strength and pharmaceutical form. 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. The other braille guides cover how it is written, read and graded.