Two tips to ensure that the signs you buy and hang up in your office are suitable for people with disabilities
If you need to get new signs for your office to direct people to, for example, the meeting rooms, canteen, bathrooms and stationery supply cupboard, it's important to ensure that you buy the right type of signs and hang them up correctly so that they can be useful to people with disabilities. Read on for some tips on how to do this.
Make sure that all of the messages on the signs are printed in both English and Braille
It is crucial to ensure that the messages that you have printed on the signs are in Braille as well as English. Braille signs feature raised round marks that can be used by visually-impaired people who have been taught how to interpret them to determine what message the signs are conveying.
Using these types of signs in your office will make navigating this space far easier for any clients, staff members or business associates who are visually-impaired, as they will not have to constantly ask other people to guide them when they need to go to a specific part of the premises. This, in turn, will make the experience of spending time on your premises less stressful for them.
It will also reduce the risk of any visually-impaired employees, interviewees or clients mistaking one room for another and being late to or missing meetings or interviews as a result of this. For example, if a meeting is due to be held in Room 'A' but the signs for the rooms in the office are not printed in Braille, a person with this disability might mistake Room 'C' for Room 'A' and end up sitting in this area for a long time before realising that they are in the wrong place.
Position the signs at an appropriate height for people in wheelchairs
When hanging signs up in your office, you must ensure that you hang them at a height which makes them easy for people in wheelchairs to see and read. Ideally, the signs that are designed specifically for these individuals (such as the sign for the wheelchair accessible bathroom) should be at roughly the eye level of a person in this type of device.
There are a couple of reasons why the height of the signs is so important. Firstly, it ensures that the people who use the wheelchairs don't have to strain their necks to try to look upwards and read a sign when they are sitting close to it, which might happen if you place it too high on a wall or door. This is particularly important for those with quadriplegia who may not be able to angle their neck to the side in order to turn their head up and read the sign.
Secondly, if a person is visually-impaired and uses a wheelchair, the sign should be within easy reach of their hands so that they can use their fingers to read the Braille dots on its surface. If the sign is too high up, they might not be able to stretch their arms out to touch it.
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