Signs
Braille on signs: what the ADA actually requires
The dimensions, the placement, the scoping and the capital-letter rule, from the 2010 ADA Standards — with the clause behind every figure.
Checked against the standard's own text on every build. Read the source — and see the five dimensions first.
Braille on an American sign is not decoration and it is not a courtesy: it is a specification, down to the thousandth of an inch. A sign whose cells are spaced outside the published ranges does not meet the standard, and a finger reading across it cannot resolve the cells — those are the same failure, described twice.
These five pages take the parts of the standard that concern braille and give the numbers rather than describing them. They are not legal advice and they are not the standard; every clause is named so it can be read at the source.
The five questions this section answers
Which signs need braille
Section 216, including the exemptions — a building directory does not need braille, and the room number beside an office door does.
Dot dimensions
Table 703.3.1 in full: five measurements, in inches and the standard's own millimetres, and what goes wrong at each end of the range.
Placement and height
Below the text, 3/8 inch clear, 48 to 60 inches off the floor, latch side of the door, and 18 by 18 inches to stand in.
The capital-letter rule
Raised text is uppercase; the braille under it usually is not. Measured here: 4 wasted cells on STAFF ONLY.
How tall the letters must be
Cap height 5/8 to 2 inches on the uppercase I, with the proportion, stroke and spacing rules of 703.2.
Not every sign is a braille sign
The split that causes the most confusion is between signs that identify a space and signs that point at one. Signs that give direction to, or information about, interior spaces comply with 703.5 — the visual-character rules — and are not required to be tactile (216.3). So a sign reading “Restrooms →” needs contrast, a non-glare finish and a character height set by viewing distance, but no braille. The sign on the restroom door itself does need braille. That split is the single most common misreading of the standard.
Every dimension and rule on this page is from the 2010 ADA Standards for Accessible Design, published by the United States Department of Justice, checked against the standard's own text on every build of this site. These are the federal 2010 ADA Standards. A given project may also be under a state or local code with its own requirements — California's Title 24 is the usual example — and where they differ the stricter one generally governs. Check the standard itself before specifying a sign; every clause quoted here is linked to its source.
The braille itself
Grade 2 translator
The standard requires contracted braille. This one is measured against liblouis on every build, and the words it gets wrong are published.
Contraction reference
Every wordsign and groupsign a contracted sign legend can contain.
Signs, lifts and medicine boxes
The wider picture, including the European requirement on medicine cartons.