Due to inaccessible design blind women cannot take a pregnancy test alone.

To expose this inequality and force change in the healthcare industry, an awareness campaign wasn’t enough.

We needed to do something that would get the world talking, and in-doing so make sure the healthcare industry couldn’t ignore it.

Proving that a solution was possible, we created the world’s first accessible pregnancy test, then released the designs open source to the world. Sparking conversations globally with an inherently sharable story to apply the needed public pressure to force the healthcare industry to take notice.

RNIB are a charity set out to change perceptions and attitudes surrounding sight loss that negatively impact blind and partially sighted people, whilst driving tangible improvements that make their lives better.

One such area in desperate need of improvement is the lack of accessible design and information.

The world has not been designed for blind and partially sighted people who often have no choice but to ask other people for assistance, robbing them of their privacy, dignity and right to own their own information.

We needed to show the impact of inaccessible design and encourage change.

To make the public take notice, we needed an emotionally powerful example of inaccessible design, relatable to anyone. We found this - the basic human right to know what is happening to your own body.

Over 5 million pregnancy tests are sold in the UK each year, but not one is accessible for blind women, who need the help of another person to read them their results. Meaning their most private information is made public and they are never the first to know about their own bodies.

So to show the world - and most importantly the healthcare industry - that accessible design mattered and prove that it was possible, we created a prototype of the world’s first accessible pregnancy test. This was supported with a provocative press radio and OOH campaign that dramatized the lack of privacy afforded to blind women when taking a test.

Our approach was rooted in our objective; we needed to get businesses to put accessibility first, and to do that, we needed to start a cultural conversation.

We knew that as such a powerful example of inaccessible design, the pregnancy test would be crucial in starting such conversations. The majority of people had never considered the devastating emotional implications of an inaccessible pregnancy test, and we knew that if we could highlight this injustice in mainstream media, that the public would be galvanised into amplifying our story.

And to add credibility to our voice and prototype, we also needed to target the experts: the design community.

Combining the power of these two audiences ensured the healthcare industry couldn’t ignore our message.

We created multiple press releases with separate spokespeople to grab the attention of specific audiences - around the issues that would engage them most.

For our design community we focussed on innovation and the story of inclusivity as a design principle - using this message to also inspire future design.

For mainstream broadcasters our press release dialled up the most pressing societal issues giving them a human angle, like disability, women’s rights, and basic human rights.

We then targeted our OOH in commuter areas of major news houses, creating a hyper focussed buzz around the people who could push our message further.

During the week we then used a newsroom approach, amplifying the two combined voices on social media for maximum impact.

Our campaign sparked conversations globally, gaining over 106 pieces of earned media - including primetime interview segments - with a 2.67 billion reader/viewership and a reach of 23.47 million on social media.

We achieved this by first catching the attention of fast moving news cycles during launch week, creating enough buzz for editorial publications to take note. This resulted in major players such as The Huffington Post & The NY Times writing long form pieces in the months after the launch - sustaining our message to ensure continued pressure on the healthcare industry.

Our long form strategy paid off, and in December 2020 ClearBlue – the UK’s largest pregnancy test manufacturer – began talks with RNIB about making an accessible test a reality. 2021 will mark phase two of RNIB’s campaign for accessible design, with the Design Museum currently in talks to support this, all due to the coverage we secured.

Full length Prototype film: £10,744.25

1 min PR Launch version: £3,370

VO artist – pro bono

Music composition - £500

Sound production – pro bono

Design, artwork and supply fees – pro bono

Design, artwork and supply fees: pro bono

Supply fee for The Sun newspaper: £25

Radio Production costs – significantly reduced fees £400

VO artist - £250 BSF (usage fee waived).

Cost to 3D print test – pro bono

Squarespace annual subscription: £144

URL purchase - £26.56

Subscription plan upgrade - £60.56

Studio costs to produce design assets for PR and other deliverables - £2040

TOTAL

COSTS: £17,560.37