Signs
Which signs need braille
Section 216 of the ADA Standards, including the exemptions — which are the part people get wrong, because the obvious candidates are on the exempt list.
Two kinds of sign carry braille under the ADA Standards. Everything else either falls under the visual-character rules or is exempt outright.
| Sign | Clause | What it covers |
|---|---|---|
| Signs identifying permanent rooms and spaces | 216.2 | Interior and exterior. Room numbers, room names, restrooms — anything labelling a space where the label is not expected to change. These are the signs that carry braille. |
| Doors at exit passageways, exit discharge and exit stairways | 216.4.1 | Means-of-egress doors are tactile signs in their own right, separately from room identification. |
And the ones that do not
The exemptions in 216.1 are worth reading before commissioning anything, because several of them are the signs people assume are the whole point.
| Sign | Note |
|---|---|
| Building directories | The lobby board listing every tenant. Exempt — its content changes. |
| Menus | |
| Seat and row designations in assembly areas | |
| Occupant names | The name on the office door is exempt; the room number beside it is not. |
| Building addresses | |
| Company names and logos | |
| Temporary signs, up to 7 days |
216.2 requires room signs to comply with 703.2, and 703.2 requires raised characters to be duplicated in braille complying with 703.3. So the braille requirement reaches a room sign through the raised-character clause rather than directly. Reading 216.2 on its own suggests braille is optional there. It is not. The chain is 216.2 → 703.2 → 703.3.
Directional signs are visual only
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.