Design for Everyone

90% of people with sight loss find information on packaging difficult or impossible to read despite it being a legal requirement to include ingredients and nutritional information on food products.

This is a major barrier to independence for blind and partially sighted people and many are suffering a poor quality of life as a result.

To combat this problem, RNIB asked us to deliver a bold and provocative campaign that would raise awareness of the issue and apply pressure to UK businesses to make their packaging more accessible.

We knew that our first barrier to overcome was finding a way to get business decision makers to really empathise with the issue—they weren’t willfully creating inaccessible packaging, they just didn’t know it was a problem.

However, we knew a standard B2B campaign wouldn’t be enough to grab their attention.  We needed to put decision makers in the shoes of a blind or partially sighted person and have them experience the issue first hand.

To support businesses to make the change quickly, we also needed to demonstrate that the RNIB had both 1:1 packaging consultants and ready-to-go solutions for them to adopt—whether that be utilising Navilens (QR technology developed for blind/partially sighted people) or braille /sensory labels on pack. ​

We created #designforeveryone, a campaign designed to take business decision makers on an empathy journey towards making more accessible packaging a reality.  ​

We built the “Whatsin Store”, a corner shop stocked with deliberately inaccessible packaging, from intentionally vague branding to items entirely removed of product information. Hidden cameras in the shop filmed people’s reactions when confronted with inaccessibility firsthand, while the shopkeeper revealed that this is often the reality for people with sight loss when they’re out shopping. ​

We then used digital media to amplify this rich content across targeted video and social. We also used trade publishing to ensure we were putting the issue on our audiences’ radar,  whilst simultaneously alerting them to the help available from the RNIB to make accessible packaging a reality.