There are no regulations regarding health & wellness communications that were relevant to IKEA’s campaign.

Millions of people in the world suffer from serious health disabilities, struggling with the most basic home activities. This In 2019 IKEA changed this reality and became the first major-retailer to make well-designed home furniture, finally & completely accessible for people with disabilities.

The ThisAbles project was made in full collaboration with two of the biggest accessibility organizations in Israel, called Milbat and Accessibility Israel. They are both non profit organizations who specialize in providing accessibility to people with disability, and employ specialists in product, accessible, and therapy.

The organizations Logos are at the head of our website project- thisables.com next to the IKEA Logo.

A tenth of the world’s population suffers from serious disabilities. That is 1 in 10 people who not only fight to live normally outside, but struggle with the most basic home activities. Things that we take for granted - they battle with: turning on the light, getting up from the couch. IKEA’s couch too, unfortunately.

So if IKEA’s mission is “creating a better life for the many”, we knew we had to do better. Our new mission: take peoples disability into consideration - and change their reality for the better. Especially since special-needs furniture are twice as expensive as with limited choice and designs.

The mission was clear: to bridge the gap between IKEA’s products and people with disabilities in order to create a significant improvement in their ability to enjoy IKEA’s products - making sure that our consumers disabilities will no longer stand (or sit) in their way.

After realizing that people with disabilities aren’t able to enjoy IKEA’s items just like everyone else - we decided it’s time to hack our own furniture.

Introducing ThisAbles: IKEA’s first step to make its most popular items accessible in every home - no health disability to stand in their way. How did we do it? We developed 13 add-ons to our most essential products, offering them free to download and 3D print on our designated website alongside a full web-series of video-tutorials. Each add-on was designed to solve a different accessibility issue: turn a small button into a giant one or lift a couch a couple of inches from the ground to help make getting up a little easier.

Additionally, for those who wished to feel and experience these add-ons physically, we constructed the first-ever accessible space in IKEA stores - making the new products easy to try out.

The innovative solution for people with disabilities starts at the website - you choose an add-on, send it to one of the 3D printers listed on the website and wait for it to arrive in the mail. Easily and efficiently, the new add-ons slip on or plug into your chosen furniture - making it much more accessible. We invented a total of 13 designs that hack IKEA’s most popular items, and changed the way people with disabilities function and feel at their own home. These hacks include items like the EasyHandle, a big, Rubbermaid-looking grip that can be added to the seamless door of a Pax shelf, and the Glass Bumper, a plastic pad that protects the bottom of a glass-doored Billy bookcase from the bump of a wheelchair. From enlarging pads for small lamp buttons, through huge zippers for pillow cases all the way to handles for your curtains

Allowing a whole new audience to enjoy our products equally - had a big impact on our business: the sales of our 13 iconic items grew up by 33%, shortly after the project was launched. More than 45,000 people from 127 countries visited our website ThisAbles.com, thousands of them downloading and 3D printing our add-ons.

ThisAbles drove one of the biggest organic international coverage in the history of Israeli brands, with PR value of $4M and reach of 489M unique users! Our story made waves in the biggest media platforms around the world including publications like the Washington Post, Fast Company, The Verge, Independent.

The project did great service for our partners as well: +1500% in no. of visits to the websites of the non-profit accessibility organizations we partnered with.

The bottom line: ThisAbles campaign disabled disabilities at home.