Jami Wants to Know What's Up With the Braille

I get braille on the elevator buttons. You never know which floors are L and M or B or whatever or which number the floors start with. That's helpful to blind folk. They can find the right floor. Braille on menus is great and I even sort of get it on the restroom doors. It's nice to be able to be sure you're going into the right one, even if you can't see what might be inside. It's all these other signs, almost randomly placed in buildings, that have braille on them that I don't get. Like the No Smoking signs. First off, pretty much any building you're in that's not a private home is non-smoking, so you can follow the basic, "if I'm indoors, I shouldn't smoke" rule, and if you're a blind person and you don't know if you're in or out, you have bigger problems than needing a cigarette. Second, the signs are always in the middle of a wall, at eye height. Ever see a blind person strolling down the hall running his hand along the wall up at eye level? No. That's ridiculous. I've seen the same sort of thing with "Staircase" signs, floor number signs and more. At some trolley stops there are with the name of the stop on them, in all different places - several I've seen are well overhead. One, I kid you not, is in the median area of the driveway leading to the parking lot. So you'd have to be walking IN THE ROAD to stumble across this sign, which you would then stop to "read" (while hopefully not getting hit by a commuter rushing to get the T) to find out that you are near the station. Of course, this will do you little good since it doesn't tell you which direction the station is in. My personal favorite of all time, from long before I had a cell phone with a camera on it, was "No Parking". Nice big No Parking sign, with the appropriate (I'm guessing) braille beneath it. What would a blind person be parking?? Or, I guess, NOT parking?? I hold out hope, deep in my soul, that the braille actually said "It should be safe to stand here, but don't count on it - people never read these signs."