RNIB for Business - Service 3

Inclusive Product Design, Focus Groups and Surveys

By collaborating with RNIB, we can ensure the design of your products meet the needs of more than two million potential customers with sight loss.

Two girls sat at a desk on a computer

It’s time you reached an often-overlooked audience

Many of the world’s best products are not built with due consideration for the needs of people with sight loss. It’s time to change that.

Not only do these users form part of £35.6 billion consumer market value represented by visually impaired UK consumers, but by ignoring their needs, you are damaging your brand.

Partnering with RNIB gives you access to RNIB’s more than 150 years of experience and expertise in accessible product design. Together, we’ll create products that meet the needs of blind and partially sighted users, making a positive impact on the world.

We’ll work with you throughout the entire product design lifecycle, from user research through design, build, and optimisation. With our extensive experience, we’ll help you to build products that are:

Clear in their purpose, with easy-to-understand instructions.
Packaged in a way that makes them easy to access and store.
Easy to handle, with a distinct feel and clear waypoints to determine orientation.
Intuitive, with high-contrast visual, tactile, and sonic cues to help users navigate and control the product.
It is one thing being accessible but another to be easy to use. An expert usability and accessibility assessment evaluates how easily key user journeys can be completed, alongside the overall accessibility of a product. How easy or difficult is it to see the visual information and how easy or difficult is it to feel the different buttons. Is there speech or other audio cues and do these make sense? The assessment is undertaken by qualified and experienced RNIB usability and accessibility staff who have worked with, and observed blind and partially sighted people interacting with a large range of products, such as ATM’s, packaging, TVs, in-home-displays, smart appliances, showers, nurse call systems, Chip and PIN devices, etc.
RNIB has access to a panel of over 350 blind or partially sighted volunteer testers who can test and provide feedback on websites, apps, products.
RNIB can organise and facilitate focus groups and carry out surveys with blind and partially sighted people to make sure the voice of the consumer is at the forefront of the ideation process and ensure the needs of blind and partially sighted people are considered at all stages.

Providing world-first and leading products for people with sight loss is not only a valuable commercial opportunity, but it can also enhance your company’s reputation, ensuring your business remains front-of-mind for blind and partially sighted people as well as their friends, families, followers and supporters.

Tried and Tested Accreditation

The RNIB Tried and Tested accreditation is an independent mark of confidence that shows your website, app or product has been put through rigorous real‑world accessibility testing by RNIB and people with sight loss.
The process for a product is to undergo an expert usability and accessibility assessment, followed by observed user testing with 12 to 15 blind and partially sighted individuals. Rechecks at each stage will confirm recommendations have been implemented before moving on to the next stage and to the accreditation after user testing. The process can start with design input, to help avoid expensive prototyping and streamline the development cycle.
Having the RNIB Tried and Tested accreditation helps you prove that your product has been rigorously tested by RNIB and found to be usable and accessible to many users with sight loss it and builds trust with customers and stakeholders by demonstrating your commitment to inclusive design.