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Typefaces
What is a font, typeface or typestyle? The mental picture most people have of the letters of the alphabet, even when they are sighted, is a fairly simple and classic one. The shape of the letter is probably similar to the one they first learned to print as a school child. Typography is an ancient art which involves taking a set of letters and numbers and making them distinctive through slight changes in form and the addition of various strokes and ornaments. Each such set is called a typestyle or typeface. One style may have additional variations. For instance, a variation might be bold or italic (slanted). With the advent of computers, these have come to be called fonts.
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Why is it so important to use different typefaces for signs? Why not just use the same typeface for all signs? This would certainly make life easier for the tactile reader, but architects and designers look upon the different typefaces as reflective of the image they want the facility to project. There are casual typefaces and formal ones. Some are modern, some evoke a sense of history. Some are delicate. Others are bold. The challenge now for designers is to find typefaces that are distinctive, but that are easy for tactile readers to read.
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The ADA calls for tactile letters to be sans serif (without serifs) or simple serif. What is a serif? A serif is usually a very small projection on the end of a letter stroke. For instance, the bar across the top of the letter T may have small projections at each end. Some letters have a small bar at the bottom as a base. That base may have small projections at each end. The term "simple serif" is very misleading, since there is no way to describe a serif as complicated or simple. Some serifs are slightly longer than others. Some may be straight and some are slightly rounded, but they are all fairly simple projections. Probably the writers of the ADA Guidelines were thinking of the sometimes elaborate flourishes on script typestyles and wanted to make sure that those typestyles were not used.
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Why are serifs a problem? Reading letters and numbers by touch is a somewhat slow and laborious task for most people. Braille is really the most efficient means of reading by touch, but of course most recently blind people, especially if they are older, have not had a chance to learn Braille. Any variation in the shape of a familiar letter or number may mislead the reader. Another problem with serifs is that they tend to run letters together, since they sometimes touch. It is difficult to tell what is a letter and what is a space between letters. Building owners should be encouraged to choose signs with sans serif tactile letters and numbers.
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