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Never come across this before....................

Gino

Premium Subscriber
Have a customer for some years now, who just asked me, can we do ADA signs ?? Sure. Can you do them in Spanish ?? Wel........ sure, I think.

It's too early to call my vendors, but is braille available in Spanish ?? Afterall, it is American disability act. Not sure if anyone is set up for Spanish.

Part two is....... these signs are to go along a nature trail, explaining what the various plants and trees are. I have no problem with what anyone wants to do with their free time, but if you're blind and can't see, but can read this abbreviated form of braille...... how can you associate it with what you can't see ?? The smells will be overwhelming, so that can't help.

Any help would be appreciated.
 

Johnny Best

Active Member
Spanish have braille. Their alphabet has some differences but you might find a company that has the interpretation and they could produce it for you.
Now Chinese or Araibic would cause a problem.
 

DPD

New Member
Software produces the braille so any letters that are keyed in will be in the braille. They do have those tilde and accents but I would suppose since the software is reading the keyboard the special characters would also be applied. Assuming you're not doing the ADA and are sending it off then this would be the concern of the company making the signs. There is one thing to watch out for and that's dialect. I had a shop a few years back that was in a mixed neighborhood. There were many different types of Spanish speaking people and the dialects are different. I had a neighborhood guy do a translation and my friends wife said it wasn't readable by all Spanish speakers so we had our customer submit the Spanish. I asked my friend's wife to give it a look-see and we found it was not Castillian but Columbian (which she is). I dunno, perhaps that's more universal?

At the end of the day if you are not making the signs the most you might be concerned about is the dialect. The ADA company will probably take care of that also since you need a kind of 'universal' Spanish.
 

Gino

Premium Subscriber
So far, nobody knows of braille for spanish signs. Regular braille, but not the abbreviated version.

I do know about all the various spellings for spanish. Our area is very very heavy in spanish and whether you have it written by mexicans, columbians, puerto ricans or argentinians, they all spell things differently and even have differences in certain words. Speaking is one thing, but most can't even read spanish, let alone braille.

Still trying, though.
 

unclebun

Active Member
As long as the vendor has Spanish braille fonts, they should be able to reproduce it. If they want to do it manually, they can Wikipedia Spanish Braille and see what to use for the special characters. They have a chart.

I would put the text of the Spanish wording onto the customer. Just as they are providing the wording of the English text, they need to provide the wording of the Spanish text.
 

Gino

Premium Subscriber
It was around 5:30 when I was putting this together. Not quite 7 when I wrote here. Most vendors don't start getting back to ya til after 8 and I was champing at the bit.

So far, no one has a definitive answer. Not really.

The spanish wording will be on the customer, that's a given, but there is no braille version for these kinda signs, that I know of. I've been checking on this and all I can find is sign language which is done with the hands and facial gestures. As for tactile type, nada.

You do realize that the braille on our American ADA signs is not that of the regular braille most blind people use. It is a special formulated version..... an abbreviated version. Of all the braille reading people in our country, only about 10% can read this ADA version. This is one of the things which makes this whole deal tough. Words, braille and sizes are different which makes reading this much more difficult than how they were taught. Certain limitations and certain contractions are even involved. They did a lotta work revamping this, but it does make things more difficult than one thinks about this stuff.​
 

Geneva Olson

Expert Storyteller
Have a customer for some years now, who just asked me, can we do ADA signs ?? Sure. Can you do them in Spanish ?? Wel........ sure, I think.

It's too early to call my vendors, but is braille available in Spanish ?? Afterall, it is American disability act. Not sure if anyone is set up for Spanish.

Part two is....... these signs are to go along a nature trail, explaining what the various plants and trees are. I have no problem with what anyone wants to do with their free time, but if you're blind and can't see, but can read this abbreviated form of braille...... how can you associate it with what you can't see ?? The smells will be overwhelming, so that can't help.

Any help would be appreciated.
I have no help for you but I'm quickly learning that SIGNS101 is better entertainment than facebook...at least it feels REAL. thanks for the visual.

on that note, I was a teacher prior to opening my sign shop. I worked in a school that was 65% hispanic kids. They were legal but their parents were not. So, their parents taught them to SPEAK spanish in the home but they didn't know how to READ spanish. The kids were introduced directly into ESL programs when they started school. Of course there were some who were special education. In a meeting we had, one teacher was advocating for a student to have a spanish- english dictionary. I asked him if he could read spanish and the boy said, "no". Well, no need for the dictionary then.
 

BobM

New Member
I would just call Tiffiney @ compliance sign. She has been very helpful to me. Just takes a minute.
 

Jeremiah

New Member
You guys are making this too complicated
I speak and read English and Spanish fluently and in either I'm not worried about " Danger Snakes " " Wheelchair Access" " Bathroom Women " . I make a lot of signs with pictures . Girl man wheelchair no dogs etc. Its all solved quicker than this thread .
 

Johnny Best

Active Member
Hey Gino, found the Mexican Braille dots!
mexican braille.jpg
 

Gino

Premium Subscriber
Well, to bring anyone who cares up to date.........
  • There is no official spanish ADA type braille available
  • They wanted wa-a-a-ay more verbiage on the sign than would fit all the English plus the spanish and still have room for all the braille.
  • It was far too expensive to make ADA stuff for outdoor use, then they could afford.
  • Last, but not least...... there was no reason whatsoever for braille on these signs as to where they were going or being installed along pathways on nature trails.
So, we're just doing regular signs for them and everyone is now happy.

The End and it's now considered a happy ending.....................​
 

Stacey K

I like making signs
That's great! It's nice they thought to include everyone but...not many blind people hike alone, at least I wouldn't think.
 

Gino

Premium Subscriber
That's great! It's nice they thought to include everyone but...not many blind people hike alone, at least I wouldn't think.


Yeah, especially cause all these trails wind around and up & down hills and most of all around a huge waterway of about 1,200 acres of water with about 35 miles of trails. No one is gonna wander around on their own, if they're blind or handicapped impaired vision. Just plain not safe.
 

Gino

Premium Subscriber
Gotta love a happy ending!
Though I'm curious. Did you definitively land on there's no such thing as spanish braille, or is that still a drawn conclusion?
Also, I never thought too hard but I would (now) assume there is no ADA braille for any other languages (Spanish would be the only one I could assume) as the Americans with disabilities act only protects Americans...

I can't say for sure, but most large usage languages and written languages will have braille for their own. However, we have the only braille system for ADA that I know of. Perhaps ask a Canadian if they have it for French or some spanish member from mexico if they have it. Down in Puerto Rico, I'm sure they use the English version as many speak English down there. Just doubt they read English braille.
 

Gino

Premium Subscriber
I was lucky. I got a few PMs and another friend of mine told me to check in with a particular company. So, I had about 5 companies to call. The first one told me just about everything I needed to know, but could not provide anything for exterior use. The next company could do it all, but had no information on the spanish version of abbreviated braille for handicapped needs. Therefore, I combined the information from those two and when I called the guy back, just sounded authoritative and TOLD him how it was and he said..... alright, then no braille it is. Afterwards, for my own satisfaction, I continued to call to get more information and then did research on-line. There is no handicapped braille systems for anyone other than Americans. I guess why the name American Disabilities Act. So, all-in-all, I might've spent 20 minutes total before I got the green light to go the other route.
 
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