Braille and Bilingual Wayfinding Signage for Dubai Municipality

Dubai Municipality brought Sun Studio a signage programme covering public parks and indoor office wayfinding: bilingual information boards and door, room and directional signage.

Every panel carries raised braille alongside printed Arabic and English.

Project facts

Client

Dubai Municipality

Location

Dubai parks and offices

Printing service

Braille & tactile signage

Application

Wayfinding, information boards, door and room signage

Languages

Arabic and English

Production

Raised braille printed with the panel graphics

The requirement

Accessible signage has to serve three readers at once — someone reading English, someone reading Arabic, and someone reading with their fingertips.

What we did

Braille is built up in cured ink as part of the same panel rather than drilled and pinned in afterwards, so the dots are part of the sign and the graphics are laid down with them.

The two languages were set together on one panel so neither reads as an afterthought, and panels can be reordered later to the same standard.

Technical considerations

The braille has to be genuinely raised and durable enough to be touched every day. Outdoor park boards have the additional problem of staying legible under UAE sun.

The outcome

Accessible bilingual wayfinding across parks and offices, readable by sight and by touch, and reorderable to the same standard years later.