ACCESSIBLE WAYFINDING: NOT JUST SIGNAGE

What is the difference between wayfinding and signage?

Signage is an effective and often essential form of graphic communication people use to find their way around built environments, particularly those with unfamiliar or complex layouts such as hospitals and retail centres. However, wayfinding encompasses far more forms than signage.

How do you navigate through your house at night with the lights turned off? What about in a hotel room or holiday house? What knowledge and perceptions are you using when you arrive in a new building or environment you’ve never visited before? Some of these environments may have signage – some may not.

Just as you use cues such as lighting, floor textures, and building layout to find your way around a holiday house, likewise people use a wide array of wayfinding cues to navigate around other built environments. Although these tools are useful to everyone who enters a building or space, the safety, dignity, and independence of people with disabilities is significantly enhanced by specifically considering their needs when designing wayfinding strategies (AS 1428.4.2-2018, Appendix A).

What is signage? 

Signage is useful for people who rely on visual cues, including people who are blind or have a visual impairment where they are highly reliant on their residual vision.

Signage has many features that combine to enhance usability: contrast between all components, recognisable symbols and pictograms that convey the message without text, clear font style, large font size, a clear and concise message, and obvious and consistent installation locations. Raised text provides additional tactile cues to assist people in understanding the sign’s message

Braille is sometimes used on signage and must replicate the same message as the text. It is only useful to blind people who read Braille (not everyone does), and they must be able to locate the sign, reach it comfortably, and have sufficient uninterrupted time to read it.

The BCA and AS 1428.1 only mandate accessible signage in certain locations. These include exit doors, sanitary facilities and their airlocks, accessible sanitary facilities, ambulant toilet cubicles, accessible adult change facilities, and directional signage where entrances to sanitary facilities are not immediately accessible. Accessible signage should also be used to indicate the presence, coverage, and type of hearing augmentation system.

What is the use of signage?

Wayfinding signage is generally intended for one or more of the following purposes:

• Identification – Where am I?

• Direction – How do I start or continue my journey to where I want to go?

• Information – How do I find the exact person, location, or service I’m looking for in a larger building or area? Informational signage may also offer additional details, important instructions, or descriptions.

• Regulation – How do I comply with legislation or rules? How do I stay safe? What are the hazards in this space?

What does AS 1428.4.2 say about wayfinding and signage?

AS 1428.4.2-2018 Means to assist the orientation of people with vision impairment – Wayfinding signs expands on the use, location, and technical specifications for wayfinding signage, including usage at site and building entries, identification of rooms and facilities, sign content, design of vertical and angled signs, clarification of tactile and Braille component requirements, and clarification of pictogram or symbol component requirements.

The BCA does not yet reference AS 1428.4.2-2018 Means to assist the orientation of people with vision impairment – Wayfinding signs. 

If you are interested in learning more about wayfinding and how to achieve best practice solutions, the seven appendices of AS 1428.4.2 contain a range of interesting and informative additional content.

The appendices are:

• Appendix A – Introduction to wayfinding

• Appendix B – Orientation and mobility

• Appendix C – Guidance for building, site, room and facility identification signs

• Appendix D – Illustrations for sign placement

• Appendix E – Sans Serif font examples

• Appendix F – Pictograms

• Appendix G – Raised tactile and Braille maps.

Wayfinding beyond signage

Intuitive design for wayfinding combines a variety of other cues with effective signage, such as environmental or architectural cues, audible, tactile and olfactory cues, and light and heat cues. Simple building layouts increase independence for all users and may eliminate or reduce the need for other wayfinding measures.

Meaning can be transferred in non-linguistic ways. Symbols, pictograms, and unique landmarks are effective wayfinding aids for people who cannot rely on English literacy or comprehension, such as people who are confused, or who have dementia or an intellectual disability. Non-visual cues, such as the smell of coffee or food, temperature changes due to air-conditioning or heating, or music playing can also alert people that they have arrived at a specific shop or entrance.

Colour is an incredibly effective tool for wayfinding. For example, a consistent colour system on signs, accessways, or walls can be more effective than the content of signs in directing people to a location or identifying connected areas e.g. hospital wards or carpark zones. Colour contrasts can indicate transitions in ground surfaces and spaces, avoiding over-reliance on signs and tactile ground surface indicators.

Good lighting assists people with a visual impairment in making best use of their residual vision. By minimising reflective surfaces to reduce glare and noise, people who are blind or have a vision impairment can make better use of audible and light cues, such as traffic sounds, sounds of doors opening, and natural light and shade, to locate building entrances.

Creating shorelines by using continuous edges on paths, building frontages, walls or fences allows many people who are blind or visually impaired to use a cane, visual contrast, and/or reflected sound to navigate through and past spaces, and to doorways or other features. Dramatically different ground or floor surfacing also alerts people to changes in spaces.

Lines of sight can assist people in using gestures or sign language to communicate.

Staff assistance, apps, or technology that provides auditory navigational cues to people who are blind or have a vision impairment should be considered supplementary measures because they are less reliable than features incorporated into the fabric of the building, which are always available to all users.

Why is wayfinding important?

Disability access solutions are only as good as people’s capacity to find them. By designing strategic and tailored wayfinding cues into your built environment, people with disabilities can become safer and more empowered users of your space. For assessments at design and as-built stages, please contact us.