We founded Access Communications when the Americans With Disabilities Act first went into effect, back in 1992. It became obvious that sign companies were going to have many questions about what the ADA Accessibility Guidelines meant, and how to translate them into actual signs that could be installed on walls and posts around buildings and sites.

Building owners and managers were puzzled as well, and architects and sign designers were not sure how to interpret the rather vague standards in the Guidelines.

We got to work, after taking a close look at every single page of the document published in the Federal Register, and began a dialogue with staff members at the United States Access Board -- the agency responsible for interpreting Titles II and III into actual regulations.

Eventually, after writing an article for Sign Business Magazine, we were asked to write a manual, and “Signs and the ADA” was written and published, and that led to many workshops, and the beginning of our long association with the American National Standards Institute.

Now, partially as a result of work we did many years ago as a member of the ANSI Sign Committee and the Communications Subcommittee of the federally appointed ADAAG Advisory Committee, we have a completely revised set of ADA Accessibility Guidelines. First adopted by the Access Board in 2004, and by several federal agencies like the Department of Transportation and the United States Postal Service, they have finally been approved by the Department of Justice, for use in Title II and Title III facilities (state and local government buildings, and privately owned facilities open to the public.

We stand ready to help you understand and use these new standards.