Building dementia-friendly communities: One sign at a time

Over 60 per cent of Canadians living with dementia still live at home and many of them want to stay involved in their communities following their diagnosis. But not all spaces are designed with their safety in mind.

Dementia-friendly spaces are built by community members who recognize that everyone has a role in supporting, valuing and including people living with dementia. The more inclusive a public space is for someone living with dementia, the more likely that person is to stay socially engaged — which can help improve their quality of life.

Tiana Alphonso, Dementia-Friendly Communities Coordinator at the Alzheimer Society of Manitoba (ASM), says making sure people living with dementia are out in the community and not isolated is important.  

She says taking the first step to making your community dementia-friendly can be as simple as printing and putting up wayfinding signs. 

“Putting up signage can help someone living with dementia reduce anxiety they might feel walking into a space, so they can navigate it independently instead of getting embarrassed about asking where the entrance or the bathroom is,” Tiana says. 

The Dementia-friendly Communities team at ASM created a resource of over 100 versatile wayfinding signs, many of which were put up in our Winnipeg office this spring.  

“I think it’s a big misconception that people living with dementia are always in assisted living or in long-term care, and not out in the community. But that’s not really the case, since the majority of people living with dementia live at home,” she says. 

Tiana emphasizes the importance of accessibility for public spaces and services.  

“People living with dementia still need access to public services, like going to the dentist, getting new prescription glasses or picking up medications at the pharmacy,” she says. 

Tiana says making these places accessible and dementia-friendly helps support people living with dementia to maintain their independence for as long as they are able. 

Benefits of dementia-friendly signs 

Dementia often affects someone’s ability to visually process information, communicate and understand language or navigate as they once did before their diagnosis.

Adding signage, regardless of whether the environment is new or familiar, can be useful for people living with dementia to independently navigate their surroundings.

These signs are intentionally made to be: 

1. Easier to see

Contrast is important. The easy-to-read font in black bold letters placed in front of the yellow background makes these signs easier to read than other coloured signs. The yellow background draws your attention, and as we age, yellow is one colour we can see for the longest in our lives. 

2. Easier to understand

These signs have simple, literal pictures and clear wording which gives people living with dementia extra clues as to what the signs may be saying. 

3. Easier to follow

Place wayfinding signs at eye level. People living with dementia often experience trouble seeing objects above, below or around their central field of vision.  

Click here to download our dementia-friendly signage PDF.

These signs are a great starting point for building safer, more accessible dementia-friendly communities. Feel free to use these signs as a guiding template and create your own to better suit the needs of your own community spaces.