Domino Printing Sciences (Domino) has teamed up with Procter and Gamble (P&G) – one of the world’s largest and most trusted suppliers of consumer and personal care products – to develop an inclusive, tactile solution for product labeling, to help visually impaired consumers distinguish between bottles of shampoo and conditioner.

Kevin Higgins, Engineer at P&G, says: “We were invited to visit Domino’s specialist laser testing labs in Hamburg, initially to discuss the requirements for the project, and then again for a two-day working session to identify the best possible solution. Together, we chose the Herbal Essences bio:renew range of shampoo and conditioners as a trial product, which could be easily marked by Domino’s D-Series CO2 laser coders to create a differentiating tactile marker.”

The chosen design features a row of raised lines on the bottom of the back of the shampoo bottles –  “S” for shampoo, “S” for stripes – with two rows of raised dots in the same place on conditioner bottles – “C” for conditioner, “C” for circles.

To ensure the new stripes and circles approach would work for consumers, P&G presented the newly-coded Herbal Essences bio:renew bottles to the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB) in the UK for consumer testing. A follow-up focus group with visually impaired consumers overwhelmingly approved of the new inclusive bottle design.

Based on the success of the initial trial, P&G rolled out the new inclusive design across all its US range of Herbal Essences bio:renew shampoos and conditioners.

You can read the full press release here.