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Boeing and Airbus develop tactile placard standard for aircraft
HAMBURG — Tactile placards and high-contrast iconography are vital to making aircraft cabins more accessible. That’s why Boeing and Airbus are working together to create an industry standard for tactile placards to assist blind and low vision passengers in navigating the onboard experience.
“I’m excited to share that between Boeing and Airbus, we’ve been collaborating for the last 14-plus months on creating recommendations for a standard for tactile placards,” Boeing regional director, cabin marketing Stephanie Werner revealed this week during a CabinSpace Live session at the Aircraft Interiors Expo in Hamburg.
“Currently, there’s no standard for iconography within the aircraft cabin, so we’ve been working on this together. We haven’t shared it outside of our walls quite yet,” Werner confided during the session, which was moderated by Rocket Girl Coaching accessibility consultant and trainer Mary Doyle.
Werner assured that the collaborative effort between the two airframers is “centering people with lived experiences.”
Airbus senior expert, human factors Hans-Gerhard Giesa, who also served as a panelist, joined Werner in sharing details about this important standards work.
“This is really new that we align our activities before we bring something in the market and just do it in advance. And we are doing this in the field of tactile placards, which will be an improvement for visually blind and low vision people,” he said, noting that blind and low vision travelers are indeed aiding their work.
“We are working with the community and want to provide standards to our industry where we align shape, size, rise, the sides of the placards, so that it’s much easier for everybody to deal with that.”
Giesa said Boeing and Airbus will share their work with standards body SAE International’s committee on accessibility to ensure it is referenced by everyone going forward.
Diehl Aviation is among the interiors specialists at the forefront of making air travel more inclusive and accessible, having won a prestigious Crystal Cabin Award in the Accessibility category for two years running: firstly for its Space³ modular lavatory concept for passengers with reduced mobility (PRMs) in 2025; and this week for its AURS (Adaptive User Routing System) for sensory impaired travelers.
Combining an accessible layout with a digital interface that adapts to individual needs — including by providing visual safety announcements and tactile wayfinding aids — AURS makes aircraft lavatories navigable for blind and deaf passengers.
Tammo Bahns, an accessibility and inclusive design expert at Diehl Aviation participated in the CabinSpace Live session, telling both Werner and Giesa that: “As a supplier that builds products for both of you, I can’t emphasize enough how important it is to have these standards so that we can base our development on something.
“And how many hours I’ve spent in workshops too where we heard, ‘please have similar, like the same placards.’”
Though it seems like a small thing, it is such “a core issue,” he noted. “So, I think this is really important.”
Rocket Girl Coaching’s Doyle, who also contributes her expertise to Runway Girl Network, was overjoyed to learn about Boeing’s and Airbus’ news. “It just makes things so much more straightforward for everyone. So I appreciate that. Thank you,” she enthused.
More broadly, Boeing and Airbus are each doing deep-dive work into understanding air travel from the perspective of travelers with disabilities with the aim of improving their experiences.
Having hosted multiple cross-industry workshops, Airbus has identified three key themes — a “magic triangle” — that would A) facilitate a wheelchair on board, B) ensure there is a PRM lavatory, and C) provide digital solutions and services, all anchored by optimized interior layouts. The European airframer’s Airspace U Suite concept, which enables PRMs to remain in their own personal wheelchair throughout the flight, secured directly to the cabin floor, was short-listed for a 2026 Crystal Cabin Award.
Boeing, meanwhile, is in the midst of a multi-year research study that has already seen it develop accessible design principles and heuristics that are helping to drive innovation and set standards. It is now freely sharing this work with industry, Werner revealed in Hamburg (pdf).
“We’ve already worked with more than 100 people with a variety of disabilities through fly-along observations, personal interviews and co-creation workshops,” the airframer says on its website. “These insights directly inform our design efforts.”
https://runwaygirlnetwork.com/2026/04/boeing-and-airbus-jointly-develop-tactile-placard-standard-for-aircraft/
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