What’s in a Sign?
As a business that serves the public, a dental office needs to be concerned with what accommodations are made to serve the handicapped. The accommodations that most frequently come to mind first are wheelchair accessibility in the form of ramps, lower counter heights, and bathroom layout and fixtures. What is often overlooked; however, are accommodations for the visually impaired.
This past week I’ve been working with the folks at Bosma Industries on the design of signage for a current dental office design project. Beyond the purely technical requirements of the signage, the folks at Bosma are a great resource for better understanding the true needs of the visually impaired. I like to utilize them to review floor plans and room arrangements to ensure that signs are placed where they will be most beneficial to someone who is visually impaired. As a person of sight, I tend to take certain things for granted; however, through working with the folks at Bosma, I’ve learned to try to imagine what it would be like to walk down a hallway and not be able to see into the various rooms and immediately know what their function is. Getting proper signage to identify rooms, including storage and mechanical closets, so that someone who is visually impaired can navigate the complexities of a dental office has become a key component of my dental office designs.
Additionally, by designing the signs rather than just going with standard, off-the-shelf signage, I can incorporate a dental office’s branding message into the signage itself; thus strengthening the interior branding message that we build into every dental office design.
Lastly, one additional fact that I’ve learned from the folks at Bosma is that that off-the-shelf signage, since it is produced by people of sight, often contains errors in its Braille. Since Bosma employees visually impaired individuals and they are the ones that proof-read every sign they fabricate, my clients and I can be assured that the signs read the way they are supposed to.
