In a world where branding is visual-first, the logos and information that live on every product’s package can be lost on the 2.2 billion people living with a visual impairment. Not to mention those with low literacy. This is especially problematic when it comes to consumer healthcare products where information like usage instructions, dosage, ingredients, and safety warnings are provided in writing on the label. 93% of visually impaired people said they don’t feel health products are accessible enough & almost 1 in 5 have taken the wrong dosage because they couldn’t read the packaging effectively. These alarming stats demonstrate the widespread lack of inclusivity on everyday healthcare products’ first line of branding: the packaging. This inspired Haleon, the new consumer healthcare arm of GSK, to reimagine and transform how people with trouble seeing or reading engaged with their brands and products while shopping for and using them.

The process of creating accessible packaging is often time-consuming and hard to reproduce at scale. So, we came up with an innovative way to achieve widespread accessibility of the information on Haleon product labels for those with trouble seeing or reading, leveraging the one element that’s already an every packaged good: barcodes. Knowing that our audience already utilizes mobile accessibility apps to navigate the world we saw an opportunity to streamline the functionality of the barcode scanner within one of the leading accessibility apps for the visually impaired: Seeing Ai. In collaboration with Microsoft's, we turned Haleon barcodes into Access Codes: the world's first barcodes that speak all the important information on our labels aloud.

Knowing our audience relies heavily upon mobile accessibility apps to navigate the world, we needed a seamless way to transform our labels into audible information. This led to our collaboration with the leading app for the visually impaired: Microsoft Seeing Ai to turn our barcodes into Access Codes. We also took an audio-first approach when introducing Access Codes to the world. We teamed up with podcasts spanning the technology, healthcare, and visually impaired lifestyle categories, as well as influencers and The Royal Institute of The Blind to get the word out to people who needed Access Codes the most. Our communications campaign centered around an original song that introduced Access Codes via audio-first mediums like radio. And we collaborated with a visually impaired director to create an accompanying music video targeted at the general public to help us spread the word to those with trouble seeing or reading.

We turned all our barcodes into Access Codes by collaborating with Microsoft to enhance the functionality of their Seeing AI app. Where the barcode scanner used to read product names and prices only, we enabled it to also read the crucial safety information found on Haleon product labels aloud. Programming all this information directly within each individual product barcode, we streamlined the process those with trouble seeing or reading go through to have the same user experience as everyone else, permanently.

Access Codes were first launched on all Haleon packs in the UK via an omnichannel audio-first campaign. We had a PR launch on 13th October, 2022 which is World Sight Day, and the full campaign launched on 3rd November, running for 6 weeks. A larger worldwide rollout of Access Codes is underway, starting in the US.

After launch, we saw the following results:

53% of consumers aware of Haleon trust the brand over competitors.

Familiarity with Haleon increased +40% and 10x more people now associate Haleon with "making everyday health more accessible."

There were 10x more downloads of the Seeing AI app. With an estimated 2.5 million people downloading the app.

The 2022 full-year report saw Haleon price growth of +4.3% and volume growth of 4.7%.

Access Codes generated over 547 million impressions for the brands. 67% of them audio, reaching the very people who would benefit most from Access Codes.