Braille on handrails: a personal and professional perspective

Scott Grimley has 24 years lived experience of blindness. Qualified as an Access Consultant since 2014 and spent 2 years on the ME64 committee at Standards Australia. A fulltime Commonwealth public servant for over 20 years in diversity, inclusion, and regulatory analysis. He dabbles in disability access for select clients.

I am Scott Grimley, half of a guide dog team, a qualified access consultant, former disability advocate, and basic braille user. I use braille to locate rooms, toilets, public transport information, labels, and a few other things. I will also use the tactile symbols on signage where braille is missing or seems incorrect.

I have had varying experiences, as a white cane user and guide dog handler, evacuating escape stairwell where the door was closed behind me and instructed to wait for the fire brigade on my own. Other times I have grasped the handrail in the middle of the fire escape stairwell to find my own wayout. As a dog handler at my workplace, I am to evacuate the building on the first alarm and before anyone else. A simple task after the first few false alarms and I now know the route. In other public buildings where I haven’t had practice evacuating, I and

During an evacuation, I will use the inside handrail as it is required to be continuous by parts 1 and 2 of AS1428. I will have my white cane or guide dog in my left hand. As I’m left-handed and guide dogs are trained to work on that side too so more often than not, I will have to use my white cane or lead my guide dog down the fire escape stairs in an unfamiliar way in my right-hand.

AS1428.2, clause 10.1(c) requires a tactile indicator in the form of a domed button to be placed on top of the minimum 300mm parallel extension of the handrail where it is not continuous.

I have not encountered a dome button on any handrail in any building I have visited, including health facilities or aged care homes. I am not always sure when I am on the level I am required to exit from. Even with the required 100mm turn back or returned to the end post or wall face, I have trouble finding the next path or emergency exit. I could use my white cane to shoreline along walls to find the doorway or give my guide dog the command, ‘Find the door!’ – if there is one and that takes up precious time.

I have been in buildings where you can exit from a fire escape stairwell to a street or plaza on the fifth floor on one side or exit to a similar situation on the ground floor facing the other way. If the continuous inside handrail of a fire escape stairwell has the dome button or handrail return, is this indicating I have more stairs to find or have I reached the required emergency exit level?

At this point, I would appreciate something more on the handrail to join the domed button. The domed button could be placed before a directional arrow, braille and tactile lettering as outlined in AS1428.4.2, stating Exit, This could be placed on the handrail in a similar way to street names being placed above pedestrian push button controls at street crossings. This would provide some orientation for me to find the emergency exit with my white cane or direct my guide dog in a direction to find the fire exit door to join all the other evacuees.