Accessibility and Inclusivity in Packaging Design

Daniel P. Burns

Abstract

The packaging industry in both graphic and structural design has underserved the vision impaired community. Globally there are 1.3 billion consumers who are vision impaired, while 36 million of them are blind. These customers’ needs are not being addressed by the majority of packaged products and manufacturers (Gardner, 2017). The following paper will examine how best the packaging industry can address accessibility issues for the visually impaired.

Introduction

This project is close to home for me. Both my grandmother and father went blind in their later years. I have been diagnosed with early onset macular degeneration. As a packaging professional with this disability in my not-too-distant future I feel the need to address it. My research shows that over decades, small steps have been taken to design packaging for those with visual impairments. In most cases designers typically default to including Braille in their designs. In others, accessible packaging is deemed too costly and any advancements are discontinued.

By researching how we currently address this market and the scope of it, I will identify opportunities to advance the implementation of current trends and where even those fall short. Furthermore, this work will strive to develop a framework for packaging design that will cater to that demographic and provide guidance to packaging designers that will enable them to include these consumers’ needs in their designs. I will seek to answer: Why are there no packaging standards that address the needs of the visually impaired? What has been done? What hasn’t worked? What can be done to create independence in these consumers?

Terminology

Vision impairment is defined as a person’s eyesight that cannot be corrected to a “normal” level. It is caused by a loss of vision acuity, when their eyes do not see objects clearly. It can also be caused by a loss of visual field, in which their eyes cannot see as wide an area without turning their heads or moving their eyes (University Of Pittsburgh, n.d.). Vision acuity is a measure of the ability of the eye to distinguish shapes and the details of objects at a given distance. Blindness and vision impairment are broken down further into two groups with subcategories. The first group is Distance Vision Impairment. Distant Vision Impairment is further broken down into four levels from Mild to Moderate to Severe to Blindness. The second group does not have subcategories, it is Near Vision Impairment (World Health Organization, 2021). Color blindness, or color vision deficiency, is not considered a vision impairment because it doesn’t lead to additional vision loss (Cleveland Clinic, 2020). However, it should be included in this discussion because part of the communication function of packaging is conveyed via color.

Vision impaired consumers are a substantial section of the population and they are not being supported by current industry packaging standards and trends. The average household spends $6,602 on groceries yearly (Price, 2021). With most households having at least one vision impaired person (National Library of Medicine, n.d.), one can reasonably assume the reported blind population of 36 million people would be 36 million households. By extrapolating this data, the packaged products needed for this demographic is roughly $237,672,000.

Currently, visually impaired consumers rely on a blend of support from the grocery store staff, personal companions, and certain technologies to shop for groceries. This is a framework that, if expanded upon and supplemented with packaging solutions, would increase the independence of this target audience.

Literature Review

There are currently many existing guidelines for use in design for the vision impaired. The Americans with Disabilities Act “prohibits discrimination against people with disabilities in everyday activities, such as buying an item at the store, going to the movies, enjoying a meal at a local restaurant, exercising at the health club, or having the car serviced at a local garage.

To meet the goals of the ADA, the law established requirements for businesses of all sizes. These requirements went into effect on January 26th, 1992. Businesses that serve the public must modify policies and practices that discriminate against people with disabilities; comply with accessible design standards when constructing or altering facilities; remove barriers in existing facilities where readily achievable; and provide auxiliary aids and services when needed to ensure effective communication with people who have hearing, vision, or speech impairments. All businesses, even those that do not serve the public, must comply with accessible design standards when constructing or altering facilities.” (United States Department of Justice Civil Rights Division, n.d.). Other sections of the Americans with Disabilities Act are already used in all grocery stores; All grocery stores have to be wheelchair accessible. The barrier to entry for consumers using wheelchairs has been removed. Product packaging is a similar barrier for the vision impaired and must be addressed as well.

There has recently been an influx of research on this topic. Among the many resources on this topic is a thesis published by Ian Baitz for Ryerson University that addresses the issue. The thesis was on Accessible Packaging Design in the Beauty Industry (Baitz, 2020). The author recognizes the difficulty that many packaged products present to consumers. Amongst the paper’s resources is an overview of inroads made by the International Organization for Standardization. The ISO’s purpose is to ensure that any products and services result in being “safe, reliable, and of good quality” for end-users. ISO went further and developed standards in relation to accessible consumer packaging titles ISO 19809. Further ISO 19809 and ISO 17351 recognizes tactile markings as a type of indicator for accessible packaging to convey information to consumers with visual disabilities. It states that tactile markings should be used to identify products that are similar in shape but with different content. These tactile markings should be simplified indicators made at a considerable size in relation to the package and in an area of the package that consumers frequently interact with. The ISO 19809 also illustrates the use requirements of braille signage in design.

The Medical Model of Disability claims that impairments are to be “fixed” with medical treatments even if they are not considered lifesaving. The Social Model of Disability states that disability is caused by the way that society is structured. The level to which disabilities are perceived is based on how visually-abled people determine them (Baitz, 2020). To combat limitations for people with visual impairments, designers must conceive suitable methods and accommodations.

Looking for more specific data on printed materials led to the Royal National Institute for the Blind (Royal National Institute for the Blind, n.d.). The RNIB is a United Kingdom charity offering support and advice to almost 2 million people in the UK with sight loss. The RNIB has put together comprehensive requirements for printed matter that exceeds what was defined by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts (Royal National Institute for the Blind, n.d.). Among the many requirements are:

1. Contrast: Use high contrast colors for text and backgrounds

2. Type Color: Type is most easily readable in black and white. If type needs to be a color it should be limited to titles, headlines or highlighted materials.

3. Point Size: Should be between 12 and 18 points.

4. Leading: Should be around 25 to 30 percent of point size (1.25, 1.3)

5. Font Style: Avoid decorative or script fonts.

6. Font Heaviness: A medium heaviness font is best. Avoid light types or thin strokes. When emphasizing, avoid italics or all caps.

7. Letter Spacing: Choose a monospaced type instead of one that is proportionally spaced.

8. Columns: Separate large quantities of text into columns.

9. Material Finish: Matte varnish finish is preferred. Glossy varnishes make the package difficult to read.

10. Clean and Simple Design: Use distinctive colors, styles and shapes on the packaging to make them easier to tell apart.

11. Avoid Hyphens

12. Justification: The main text is left aligned. Right margins are ragged, not justified, because centered and right aligned text is difficult for some people to track.

13. Lines of Text: Each line of text is no longer than six inches (50-60 characters per line).

14. No Wrap Around Text: Text should not wrap around corners to other panels.

This topic is prominent in multiple trade articles. The various articles all brought up the same points as the Royal National Institute for the Blind, but were not as concise or clear. The takeaway is that there is a growing recognition that many consumers cannot accurately use current packaging and that it needs to be addressed.

Methodology

The use of technology is currently how the vision impaired consumer is able to engage with packaging. The earliest technology that is still in use for packaging, called haptic technology, is the process of conveying information through touch (McLaughlin, n.d.). A common example of this is the Braille alphabet, Figure 1 (Perkins School for the Blind, n.d.).

Alphabet

Elia Alphabet

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S

Arthritis or

Back or spine

Heart trouble/hardening

Lung or respiratory

Deafness or serious hearing

Limb/extremity

Mental or emotional

Blindness or vision

The Braille alphabet is an embossing pattern of raised dots arranged in a cell of up to six dots in a three by two configuration (Braille Works, n.d.). It was first created in 1824 by Louis Braille. The user “reads” the letters by moving their hand from left to right along each line of type. The specifications for the most recognized haptic, Braille, is well established (Brailleauthority.org, n.d.).

While Braille is clear to read, the large uniform size of the cell would make most packaging unable to convey its information in this manner. The distance from center of dot to center of adjacent dot is 0.092 inches which is very similar to the FDA’s minimum ingredient label size of 7 point type, 0.097 (U.S. Food and Drug Administration, 2018). However, Braille is a fixed width type which does not allow for kerning and spacing variations that occur in modern design. It simply takes up too much space to clearly communicate the information from the package in its current form.

While Braille is the most commonly recognized haptic, there are other choices such as the ELIA Alphabet (The Elia Idea, n.d.), the Moon Alphabet (Royal National Institute for the Blind, n.d.), and Cyrus (Raised Universal Symbols). The ELIA Alphabet stands for Education, Literacy and Independence for All. This is a digital font and printer with the ability to produce raised-ink letterforms. The ELIA Alphabet consists of raised letter frames that the reader runs their finger around clockwise and then inside the frames, Figure 2 (ELIA Alphabet, n.d.). The Moon Alphabet was created in 1845 by William Moon. The Moon Alphabet is a series of raised shapes. The characters are large and are similar to their printed equivalent, Figure 3 (AZ Deaf and Blindness, n.d.). Due to the nature of its design, it works well for people with less sense of touch or for those who lose vision later in life.

As seen in Figure 4, CyRUS Raised Universal Symbol is an augmentative and alternative communication that uses objects or pictures that share a perceptual relationship with the items they represent as symbols (Victorialand Beauty, n.d.). All of these alternatives to braille have unique strengths and weaknesses. With tactile pictograms easier to learn than Braille (Hagood, 2016), it can be argued the simple pictogram nature of CyRUS haptics has the most promise.