Olay Designs Accessible Lid That Brands Can Copy, Improve On—But Is It Enough?
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As part of its Open for All campaign, Olay has designed a jar lid aimed to do just that: open for all. The skincare brand has rethought the conventional lid for customers with disabilities ranging from “dexterity issues and limb differences, to chronic issues causing joint pain and vision impairments.”
To ensure the packaging change would meet the accessibility needs of a wider market, the Procter & Gamble subsidiary consulted consumers of various conditions, external experts like disabled journalist Madison Lawson, and its team members. The campaign is in line with P&G’s mission to make its packaging “more accessible for people with disabilities” by 2025.
The resulting ‘Easy Open Lid’ features four major upgrades to the usual lid. There’s an overcap that users can easily grip onto with one hand, a rubber grip under the lid to prevent slipping, a high-contrast label, and Braille text distinguishing product type. The additions were made with Olay’s most popular line, the Regenerist face cream series, in mind.
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“It’s just a small step, but if we all take small steps together, we can make beauty more inclusive for all,” responds fashion model Jaleesa Graham, who was born with the lower half of her right arm missing.
As hinted by the name, the Easy Open Lid has been made open-source so the beauty industry can work towards a norm of accessible product design, and maybe even make their versions better. As it stands, the design and the campaign itself still have excruciating flaws, according to a notable Fast Company op-ed by disabled activists Liz Jackson and Jaipreet Virdi—creating the niggling suspicion that it could have just been for PR theatrics.
For one thing, even research from fellow P&G brand Herbal Essences in 2018 concluded that only a fraction of legally-blind people can read Braille. It responded by designing bottles with raised tactile dots and stripes to differentiate products.
Olay, on the other hand, has not only added Braille to its jars, but the text across all lids also simply reads “face cream,” with no Braille identifiers for whether it’s the Vitamin C or Retinol 24 cream from the line.
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Further, Olay’s advertisement on the accessible design, published online in the New York Times, doesn’t have alt-text—so how are low-vision and blind customers going to find out more about the product?
And while the lid touts an accessible design, it’s worth pondering again if it is truly accessible, given that the revamped jars are an online exclusive and will be available for a limited time. “Why is it a limited edition?” is a sentiment shared in the YouTube video’s comments section.
At the very least, Olay is doing one thing right by making the design replicable by competitors. If accessible packaging becomes the benchmark, there’ll be little use for performative efforts, which would likely result in a pushback by growingly informed customers who’d know if an initiative is inauthentic. The brands that truly strive for inner growth would be the ones to thrive.
Jackson and Virdi concluded their piece with a reverberant warning to the industry: “No product is truly going to succeed beyond its hype until brands begin to recognize the power imbalances embedded in inclusive design processes.” Read it in detail here.
[via Fast Company, images via Business Wire]
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