Innovation rooted in empathy
In recent years, companies have started paying greater attention to the needs of wider audiences in their brand design. From vibrating football shirts to flexible typography, David Benady uncovers how inclusivity is being woven throughout design more broadly.
Hard-to-open packaging, tiny print that’s almost impossible to read, retail environments planned with little thought for usability and subtitles that fail to dramatise the soundscape on screen. For years, brands have overlooked the needs of users who struggle to access products in conventional ways.
But today, after persistent advocacy by disability rights groups, legislation in the EU and US and a growing acknowledgement of human diversity, inclusive design is gaining momentum. A cultural shift is underway, and brands are expected to consider the diverse needs of users, whether physical, mental or related to age, gender, race, ability, literacy, neurodiversity or culture.
At this year’s Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity 2025, two inclusive designs received garlands. Caption With Intention, which adds drama to subtitles for those with impaired hearing to match the sound action on screen, took the Design and Digital Grand Prix, the festival’s highest honours. Meanwhile, Apple AirPods Pro 2’s Hearing Health feature – providing a hearing aid experience for mild to moderate hearing loss – won a Gold Lion in design.
“There are promising signs that inclusivity in design, whether through packaging, brand identities, products or services, is steadily becoming mainstream,” says Michela Graci, strategy partner at Coley Porter Bell. Companies such as Microsoft, Unilever, L’Oreal and Mastercard are showing that embedding inclusivity as a foundational principal can be effective across product categories, she says. “Their success demonstrates that designing with accessibility in mind isn’t just ethical – it is also innovative and commercially viable.” This is having a ripple effect encouraging more brands to weave accessibility into their DNA and use design with empathy to create inclusive, human-centred products and experiences.
Just a trend?
Still, some disability campaigners are sceptical. They worry that brands may be simply ticking legislative boxes and virtue signalling with inclusive design. They question how far the big brand owners go to imbed inclusive thinking into their strategies and are concerned that it often appears as an afterthought created with a compliance mindset. Liz Jackson, a founding member of advocacy group The Disabled List, told an interviewer that much inclusive design is “hype” and a top-down process, with disabled people brought in after the work has been done to review the result.
Another issue is that disabled people often create their own “hacks” for packaging and design problems, for instance finding ways to open bottles by wrapping cloths round the top or other imaginative solutions. Creating easy-to-open tops may have the effect of disempowering disabled people and over-riding their own hacks. Jackson says she has seen many well-intentioned and creative solutions to problems that “we didn’t know we had.”
Futurebrand’s executive creative director for brand experience, Paul Silcox, agrees that accessibility is seldom put at the heart of the design process. “Briefs rarely consider baking in accessibility to the creation of assets and tools needed to make experiences truly accessible and brand-led,” he says. “To truly embed accessibility and innovation, the process must start earlier, uncovering audience insights and unmet needs at the beginning of the project.”
Futurebrand helped develop a haptic identity for Mastercard, a vibration on the credit card that allows users to feel a buzz from transactions as they happen. This helps people with sensory needs and benefits broader audiences such as those facing language barriers or older users.
“Putting more inclusive design at the heart of the brief will strengthen brand value, build trust and demonstrate integrity,” says Silcox.
Advancements in inclusive design
Some brands have made significant strides in catering to specific needs. Kellogg is one of the brands that has implemented NaviLens, a QR code on packaging. A blind or partially sighted person points their camera in the direction of the pack, and it makes a signature sound to guide their phone. Once they locate the QR code with their mobile, it opens an audio description of the ingredients and product information.
Many big consumer brand companies have made forays into inclusive packaging and design. In 2021, Unilever launched Degree Inclusive, a deodorant designed to be accessible for people with visual impairment and upper extremity impairment. And Procter & Gamble has shown that it is possible to combine sustainability with inclusivity and child safety. The ECOCLIC cardboard box for Ariel is made with Forest Stewardship Council-certified materials, is certified as child safe and is made with inclusivity in mind. The product underwent four years of testing with more than 2,000 consumers including parents and people with dexterity, sight and cognitive impairments. Meanwhile, Vaseline Transition Body Lotion is a body lotion designed for transgender women who face challenges during the transition process.
Despite these innovations, some believe that there is still a big knowledge gap in awareness and understanding of what inclusive design entails. Sarah Fairhurst, creative director at global strategy and design studio Dalziel & Pow, says that although awareness is growing it is not always prioritised in briefs. “There are admirable best practice standards for people in wheelchairs, the hard of hearing and visually impaired but to be truly inclusive, sensory engagement must take into account the diverse needs of those with invisible disabilities and sensory needs – those with heightened, reduced or a complete loss of one of more of their senses.” She says that in a retail or public environment, a lift, a lowered cash desk, an entrance, a piece of content or a sign can all enhance inclusivity and become experiences in their own right.
Fairhurst cites sensory maps as an example of inclusivity in design. These are used in museums and public spaces and are overlaid with icons highlighting sensory stimuli such as sound, light and heat in areas of the building. Zurich UK has adopted a sensory map of its workplace environment, helping employees to understand the building better and providing information to better equip them to make decisions that suit their sensory needs during the day.
Dalziel & Pow has worked with the Guinness Storehouse in Dublin which is accredited as autism-friendly by Ireland’s autism charity AsIAm. Staff are trained in how to cater to the needs of visitors with autism and other forms of neurodivergence, and they offer sensory kits including earplugs, sensory maps and sensory-friendly hours.
A standout example of inclusive experience design is Newcastle United’s partnership with Saudi entertainment company Sela, which sponsors the club. In the ‘unsilence the crowd’ campaign, they use technology to change the experience of deaf football fans during the games. The Sela Sound Shirt uses haptic technology to translate stadium sounds into vibrations so deaf fans can experience the feeling of the roar of the crowd when a goal is scored.
The impact of governance
Various pieces of legislation and regulation are driving change and promoting inclusive design. In the US, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) has standards for accessible design as the foundation of accessibility in buildings. It also enforces digital accessibility.
The European Accessibility Act focuses on digital inclusion, requiring computers, e-commerce, banking apps, ATMs, transport and e-books to comply with accessibility standards. The legislation does not directly regulate packaging, except where the packaging is necessary to access or operate a product. Safety and usage instructions on the packaging should also be accessible.
But other regulations can inadvertently have an impact on inclusive design. George Wheeler, senior strategist at WMH&I, points to the EU single-use plastics directive which demands that plastic caps and lids on beverage containers up to three litres should remain attached after opening. This requirement for tethered caps aims to reduce plastic litter. But it also helps those with visual impairments who might struggle to find the cap or lid after opening. “They are easy to misplace if you are blind and difficult to pick up if you have lost hand dexterity after a stroke or injury. The directive on tethered caps has proven to be a quiet success story of inclusive packaging,” he says, though he adds, “We shouldn’t have to rely on accidents.”
According to Ricardo Bezerra, executive creative director at Jones Knowles Ritchie, the designers should return to the roots of their craft. The word design derives from the Latin designare, meaning to define, and today the challenge for designers is to redefine brands, products and packaging in a way that changes behaviour and lifestyles. “Real design is by nature inclusive, universal and transformative,” he says. But he adds, “Many brands treat inclusivity as a compliance checkbox, or something only needed for specific audiences like older adults or people with disabilities. The real challenge – and opportunity – is to see it as a source of creativity and innovation from the beginning.”
He believes the role of designers is to provoke the client to see the “brief within the brief” – “the one that transcends the commercial challenge and creates shared value for people and planet.” He says that innovation must be rooted in empathy, collaboration and experimentation.
Bezerra points to JKR’s custom typeface for Mozilla, developed with Studio Drama, which was designed to be open source and highly flexible, working seamlessly across interfaces with consistent expression through features such as uniwidth design – where each character’s width remains constant across styles – and offers 32 styles.
Another inclusive design he finds powerful is the typography for Dyslexia Scotland, which used Comic Sans, a much-criticised typeface, to stoke controversy and spark conversation.
[Image credit: Innocean Berlin]
While personal care, health and food and beverages are leading the shift to inclusive design, sectors such as fashion and luxury tend to lag, he says.
But he remains hopeful. “The conversation is evolving, but a deeper culture shift is needed,” he says. “As professionals, we must keep rethinking our practices and decentralising our viewpoints. Brands must stop seeing inclusive design as design for people with disabilities and start seeing it as design for human diversity.”
This article was taken from Transform magazine Q3, 2025. You can subscribe to the print edition here.
