Braille Sign Pros

On July 26, 2026, it marked 36 years since President George H.W. Bush signed the Americans with Disabilities Act into law. For anyone working in facilities management, compliance, or building signage, the anniversary is worth stopping to think about, because room ID signs were addressed directly in the original law, and they're still among the most frequently miscounted, misread, and misinstalled signs in buildings across the country. That's not a small oversight. Every school, hospital, hotel, office, and apartment complex in the U.S. has doors, and most of those doors need compliant signs. Somewhere along those 36 years, a lot of facility managers got the wrong information, bought signs from the wrong vendors, or inherited non-compliant signs from previous building owners and assumed they were fine. The ADA Had Room ID Signs Figured Out in 1990. Buildings Are Still Catching Up. The ADA didn't leave the room signage question vague. From the beginning, the law specified th...

A fire alarm trips at 2 a.m. Power cuts. The stairwells go completely dark, and people are moving fast, disoriented, counting on your building's  stairwell signs  to tell them exactly where they are and where they need to go. A standard sign mounted to a painted concrete wall gives them nothing. It's there, technically, but in total darkness it might as well not be. The problem isn't always what a sign says. A lot of the time, it's whether it can say anything at all when conditions go sideways. What "ADA Compliant" Doesn't Actually Tell You About Your Stairwell Signs Most facility managers assume that once they've ordered ADA stairwell signs, the job is done. And in many respects, it is. The 2010 ADA Standards (§216 and §703) cover character height, braille grade, tactile character depth, mounting height, and surface finish. A properly installed sign with Grade 2 braille and 1/32 in. raised characters meets the federal baseline. Your accessible stairwe...

If you have ever ridden an elevator in a public building and noticed the small raised dots next to each floor button, you have already answered part of the question: yes, braille is used in elevators, and it is required by federal law in the United States. At Braille Sign Pros, elevator signage is one of the most common product categories we manufacture, precisely because every commercial building with an elevator has to get this right. This guide walks through where braille appears in an elevator, what the ADA actually requires, and how building owners, contractors, and facility managers can stay compliant. Why Braille Belongs in Every Elevator Elevators are one of the most challenging environments for a person who is blind or has low vision. You cannot see which floor button you are pressing, you cannot read the floor number on the door jamb when the car stops, and you have no visual reference for which side of the lobby to exit. Tactile characters and braille solve all three proble...