School Design Guide SDG-02-04: Primary & Post Primary School Specialist Accommodation for Pupils with Special Educational Needs.

SDG-02-04 replaced TGD-026, the Department's 2012 planning and design guidelines for SEN accommodation, which now sits in the archive section of the Department's technical guidance page. It was revised after feedback from school authorities and a review of completed special class projects, with input from the Inspectorate and the National Council for Special Education.

It applies in full to SEN accommodation in new primary and post-primary school buildings, and where feasible to extensions. Its principles also apply where existing classrooms are re-purposed and where SEN accommodation is provided in temporary buildings. Projects already at tender stage when it was issued proceed without amendment, so check which guide a live project was designed to.

The signage content sits in a short clause on colour schemes, wayfinding and signage. It asks for legible internal signs in a plain sans serif face on a contrasting background, positioned so that they neither create a hazard nor become hard to read, and it asks for tactile lettering, symbols and braille together. It points designers to the National Council for the Blind of Ireland (NCBI) and BS 8300 for further detail, and repeats the Official Languages Act requirement.

The same clause treats colour, contrast and texture as part of the wayfinding system. Some pupils with SEN find their way by colour, texture and coding, and contrast between wall and floor helps pupils with a visual impairment. The guide recommends a muted palette of pastels, earth tones and neutrals in the SEN accommodation, so teachers can add stronger colour to suit individual pupils. Bright colour coding schemes designed for the rest of the school should be checked against that.

SDG-02-04 does not set out a full signage specification of its own. TGD-020 Section 10 remains the detailed reference for Irish language, door nameplates, tactile lettering heights and braille on Department-funded schools, and TGD M is the statutory floor. Read SDG-02-04 as the SEN layer on top: where a special class sits, how visible the route to it is from the entrance, and how calm and consistent the signs and colours around it should be. The BS 8300 reference in the guide is undated; apply the current BS 8300-2:2018.

Addendum 1 to TGD-026 (September 2013) is still listed among the Department's current documents. Its signage clause asks for signs that are large, clear and well positioned, symbols in place of lettering where possible, embossed or tactile lettering and symbols, and braille, with Building for Everyone Book 4 and the NCBI as further sources.

In England the DfE's Inclusive education estates guidance (June 2026) covers similar ground for mainstream settings, with more detail on symbols, Makaton and decision-point signage. Scotland's Sensory-inclusive Learning Environments guidance and the Northern Ireland Nursery Schools Building Handbook both treat wayfinding as part of designing for neurodivergent and sensory-impaired pupils. None of them replaces the access provisions of the Building Regulations in its own jurisdiction.