‘No going back’: lessons from P&G’s product inclusion journey, with Sam Latif - Episode 9

SL 0:00

I remember feeling that frustration you know, that unnecessary barrier again, like why can't I read my pregnancy test result when I can do my online banking, I can do my shopping, Tesco shopping online. But here I am in a professional position but still can't read my pregnancy test.

TS 0:22

Welcome to Made For Us, a podcast about the intersection of innovation and inclusion. It's for anyone who's curious about how to develop products that work better for all of us. I'm your host, Tosin Sulaiman, a podcaster and former business journalist. My guest today is Sam Latif, P&G's first company accessibility leader. When Sam joined P&G over twenty years ago, she was one of two blind employees. In our conversation, we talk about the barriers she experienced in her own life. And the moment she realized she could do something to make P&G's products more accessible. But first, she knew she had to get her colleagues to experience a day in the life of someone with a disability.

SL 1:00

People just didn't know what they didn't know. And suddenly with the disability challenge, now we know. And there's no going back because once you know, you can't actively make your products inaccessible anymore.

TS 1:13

Stay tuned to learn how P&G had to completely rethink its packaging and its advertising, and for Sam's insights on balancing the business and the human case for inclusion. Now, here's my conversation with Sam Latif.

SL 1:25

So I'm Sam Latif, I'm P&G's first company accessibility leader. And in that capacity, my role is about making our company more accessible for both our employees and our consumers. And I'm based in the UK.

TS 1:42

Okay, great, thank you. And a lot of what you're doing now stems from your own personal experience. It'd be great if you could share a little bit about how that has informed the work that you're doing now.

SL 1:53

Yeah, so I'm ninety seven percent blind. I was diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa, essentially, I started losing my vision from the age of four. And by the time I was a teenager, I couldn't really read any more, I couldn't see any more. I have something similar to tunnel vision. So my tunnel got narrower, and it got blurrier over time. So I can tell you that the lights are on. But that's as much as I can do now, which does save the electricity bill in my house. I started working in P&G twenty-three years ago, a long time ago. And my career started off in IT. I worked in a lot of global and regional roles on many household brands that are probably well known, like Pampers and Pantene, Head and Shoulders, Gillette, and I did a lot of typical, I guess IT marketing type of jobs.

And in Twenty-Fifteen, things changed. So in Twenty-Fifteen, first of all, I had three children under the age of three. So I have twins, boy and girl twins, and another older boy. And suddenly, my life just felt, you know, I didn't have the time that I used to have to make products accessible. Well, basically, as a blind person, I've grown up experiencing lots and lots of barriers in my everyday life. And, you know, to be quite honest, a lot of the times you diligently work through those barriers, you get around them, and you find compensating ways to to live your life. But when I had the three kids and a full time job, and then I was trying to do basic things like take a shower, or clean my house, or, you know, put on my makeup, my skincare, I would always get muddled up with the products. I didn't know what was what, and this kind of frustration got exaggerated when I didn't have enough time.

And I felt so frustrated that there's all these barriers that I'm experiencing, you know, like, when I'm in the shower, I couldn't tell shampoo and conditioner apart. When I was changing my babies, I didn't know which nappy sizes I was using. When I was trying to go to the shops, you know, how do you pull a double buggy and then carry on a third one in front of you? I couldn't move my buggy in front of me. So I had to pull it from behind and have my cane moving forward. And I would eventually make it to the shops. And then when I got to the store, how could I see the products on the shelf, you know, just took so long knowing what product was what.

And things like advertising, you know, I would always listen to ads or information about products. But quite often when I was listening to the ads, I would never even know what the brand was, what the ad was for. And so all these frustrations coupled with other like, just daily living felt really frustrating. And I got to the point where I thought someone needs to do something about this. And then I can had that epiphany that wait a minute, I worked for one of the largest consumer goods companies in the world. And I'm, you know, it's, I'm in a position to do something about this. So that's where the journey started.

TS 5:31

Yeah, there's a lot to unpack there. And if we could actually just go back to your younger years, because I remember I heard you speak about some of the products that you used when you were younger. And I was just curious how that influenced your thinking about inclusive design.

SL 5:47

Well, when I was growing up, in the shower, I would put in elastic band around my shampoo, or my conditioner bottle, and I would place things in a certain drawer on a certain shelf. But then, you know, you start living with people, now I live with my husband, my kids, and they don't put things back where they're supposed to go. So you know, that that's where I started experiencing, you know, frustrations, because I thought, if only these products were accessible for me, I wouldn't have to place them in a certain spot, I wouldn't have to put a rubber band around them. And that's when I began thinking about how do I make this point to lots of people inside of P&G who actually have the ability to do something about this.

And I came up with this idea of a Disability Challenge. And I got P&G people to experience the day in the life of someone with a disability. And it was then that they wore glasses that simulate different types of sight loss. And they could then try and tell me which was shampoo or conditioner. And then I got them to wear these gloves that simulate problems that people with dexterity challenges have in their hands, and open and use some of our products. And I got them to watch our ads on mute, or I got them to watch our ads with the screen turned off and ask them to describe the the key message in that ad.

And it was really fascinating for them, because they hadn't realized that they were unintentionally excluding these people who have encountered these barriers daily in their lives, and we've never complained about it. So you know, then building on that, I put a business case together to help our company leadership understand that, you know, fifteen to twenty percent of the population has a disability and seventy percent of those disabilities are invisible, so you can't see them. It's not as easy as male and female.

And I also highlighted that, you know, we as a company take a lot of pride in our consumers understanding who uses our products. And you know, quite frankly, everyone uses our products multiple times a day, all over the world. But we have never thought about understanding the needs of the people with disabilities that are the 1.8 billion people on the planet that have a disability. And that was eye opening, because we had never thought about that. And we hadn't realized that it's actually a business building opportunity as well, because the combined disposable income of these people are in the trillions, you know, so it was really great because the disability challenge helped to open the hearts and then open the minds of great people inside of P&G, who then you know, really started working to make our company, our company culture, our products, our communications, accessible for this community.

TS 9:14

So when you started the Disability Challenge, was there a point when you realized that you had got people to care?

SL 9:20

Yes. You know, when people took the challenge, I heard literally the penny drop. You know, the people just didn't know what they didn't know. And suddenly with the Disability Challenge, now we know and there's no going back because once you know, you can't actively make your products and accessible anymore. And so it's really been a phenomenal journey that the company has been on. We've really been helping open the hearts and minds of lots and lots of people in different positions in the company who have the capability, the power, the influence, to make change happen across lots of different functions?

TS: 10:02

And is the disability challenge something that's still ongoing? Is it something that people have to take when they joined the company?

SL: 10:10

The Disability Challenge is ongoing. So we can run it for, you know, particular business units, we've run it with our CEO and his leadership team. We've ran it with different business teams all over the world. And it continues to happen in various shapes and forms sizes. And a lot of insights that have already come out of the disability challenge. For example, we did a disability challenge with our Always team. And from that challenge, we realized that our instructions on our Femcare Always brand, were not so clear. So they were very difficult to understand for people with learning difficulties, and also for people to see with low vision, and it promptly got them into action. And then very quickly, using our employees with disabilities in the company giving feedback to them on on their designs, were able to create, you know, better instructions on pack.

And similarly, there's lots of other examples, you know, for example, we introduced tactile markings on our shampoo and conditioner bottles back in Twenty-Eighteen. That was the first big thing that we did, actually, we added tactile stripes on our shampoo bottles, that you could rub your thumb across and feel the four tactile stripes. And know that S for stripes, S for shampoo. And that became like a universal language for P&G that we want to include on all of our shampoo bottles. And we put dots or circles as we call them for conditioner, C for circle, C for conditioner.

So the disability challenge, we ran it specifically for our beauty care and our hair care business. And from that challenge, they recognized that this was an opportunity to help blind and low vision people identify shampoo and conditioner through touch. And we started investigating and exploring various options on how we could actually do that. How can we build it in moving forward in any new products that we create, and it was really fantastic when we launched it in Twenty-Eighteen, the feedback from the community in North America was just phenomenal. People had contacted us and explained that they had never imagined a company the size of Procter and Gamble, would make their products tactile for for the blind community. And they were really encouraging and they give us some really great feedback.

TS: 12:50

And what would you say were the biggest challenges for P&G during the design and manufacturing process.

SL: 12:58

For the tactile work, initially, it was finding a way to do it that was cost effective. When we first started looking at putting tactile symbols on our shampoo bottles, we tried looking at putting different stickers on the bottle that were tactile, but you know, adding thick stickers on a bottle would be very expensive. And for a bottle of shampoo that costs you know, less than ten dollars, to add stickers that cost, you know, a lot wasn't feasible. We then explored other options like adhesives that we could stick on the bottle - that didn't work. And then we found a way to use something that was existing in our in our production line, which was a laser printer that would print a ten-digit code in every bottle, it's on the back of the label. And it was a wee bit tactile. And I could feel that ten-digit number. And I remember the R&D guy Shane saying to me, Sam, we've looked at all options, nothing's going to work. Maybe this laser printer is our only choice. And so we went to the laser company called Domino to their offices in Germany for two days where we sat down, and we tried different forms of printing laser onto the back of the bottle. And that's when we came up with the winning idea of putting the tactile stripes and circles because they were tactile enough for you to be able to rub your thumb across. And we had those laser printers already that we could literally turn on in our in our manufacturing plants. So that was the first massive hurdle that we had to overcome.

Then when we got the feedback on those tactile products, it was really heartwarming to get unsolicited feedback, to win so many different awards to, you know, it really encouraged us to continue figuring out how can we do this moving forward because that laser tech technology wasn't, didn't work on certain plastic materials. So what we've now started doing is, every time we are creating a new bottle, we insert the tactile symbol into the mold. And that doesn't cost much for us to do. And it means that we can place the tactile even more prominently on the bottle, so it's improved the tactility. And it's made it so much more prominent. And it's the start of a universal symbol that we can put on all of our shampoo bottles.

TS: 15:55

And I'm interested in why you decided to go with tactile markings as opposed to Braille.

SL: 16:02

So less than ten percent of blind people can read Braille. And it's quite challenging for for people to be able to read Braille, especially many people as you age, you lose your vision, and you also lose the sensitivity in your fingers. And if you've not learned braille as a young child, it's going to be extremely difficult for you to read the braille. Four tactile stripes are very simple to feel, I mean, I can just visualize rubbing my thumb across four tactile stripes, anyone can do it. So our goal was to be able to make it as accessible to as many people as possible.

TS: 16:45

And besides this initiative, what have been the other big milestones in accessibility and inclusion at P&G.

SL: 16:52

So if we continue on the product accessibility, what we've what we're doing at the moment is a pilot to make our packaging accessible for people with disabilities to help them see and select products, both in store and at home. And the way we're doing that is we're inserting our code called Navilens into our packaging. Now, normally, blind people have huge difficulty using a QR code or traditional QR code, because in order for that QR code to work, you have to know where the QR code is placed, you have to line up your mobile phone exactly in front of the code for that code to then get activated. Well, that doesn't work for the majority of blind people. And so with this Navilens code integrated into our Pantene, into our Pampers, Always and Ariel, Bold, Fairy pods boxes now in the UK. What this will enable blind people to do is download an app called Navilens. For sighted people, there's an app called Navilens Go, and once you open that app, when you're walking down the aisle, the products will have the Navilens cord on the front of the pack. And suddenly you can see all the products on the shelf. It will read the Pantene shampoo, Pantene conditioner, reads Pampers size one, Pampers size two, you can read all that information through your smartphone. And typically you wear a headset, you know when you're blind anyway. So the information comes through the headset.

And so we're piloting Navilens, which will not only help the blind as I've described, it also helps people who have hearing loss for example, or autism. So when people with hearing loss or autism are in store, they get sensory overload. But if they use Navilens, again via their headset, or hearing it, they can communicate with the product and block out all the other sounds in the store. And then if you think about people in a wheelchair, who may not be able to access the shelves or people with hand dexterity that don't want to lift products to see what's on the pack. It's going to help them too. And finally, the Navilens, it can if you are visiting the UK and let's say you're you don't speak English, but your phone is in Spanish or Japanese or German. When you point your phone to the products, it will give you the product information in the local language that your phone is and so it helps a variety of people. And it's a phenomenal example of inclusive design.

TS: 19:47

And in terms of the scale of this and number of people that this could benefit, what's the research around that?

SL: 19:52

So I think it's on the same principle it will help all people with with disabilities but it will help all people without disabilities as well. I think today, what we see is the research that we did with Pantene was people who are blind, and there's maybe 4 million according to IAPD, International Association for people with disabilities, there's about 4.8 million people in the UK with low or no vision. And these people have to spend, on average, like 30 minutes making a physical product accessible, they have to invest in asking someone to help them around the store. And often what we found from the research was that people were buying the wrong product, because the person in the store picked up the wrong product for them. Or they wouldn't tell them the entire range, because they would just ask them, what is it that you want? So if I asked you what shampoo do you want, you know, the answer might be Pantene. But you might not remember the exact kind of variant name. So there's, you know, so this was also going to help in those situations. So we found that people want the independence, they want to be able to do this for themselves.

And what the research told us, the kind of feedback that we got was people loved using this and learning about our brands. We found out for example, on our pods business, like a lot of people with disabilities use pods to do their laundry. But they didn't know until they started using Navilens that you had to put the pod in the drum first, and then your laundry. And there was a big aha moment when they learnt, when they heard the instructions, which told them that you have to put the pod in first. They were saying, Oh my God, I've been doing my laundry wrong for so many years, and only now I've learned how to do it properly. And the last bit of feedback that we got was they wanted Navilens on everything. Because today, it's only on select few brands. And the feedback was that we want it on everything.

TS: 22:09

And another initiative that you worked on was Clearblue, the pregnancy tests. What's been the impact of that?

SL: 22:17

Yeah, so Clearblue was an amazing, this is again, when you touch the hearts and the minds of people, they just activate and get things done. So I shared my story when I was trying to get pregnant. And I was not able to read the results of my pregnancy test. And I remember one weekend, my husband wasn't around, and I desperately wanted to know if I was pregnant. So I walked to my local chemist and asked if they would read my pregnancy test results to me. And the first chemist I went to, the the person said, no, sorry, that's not my job. And, you know, bravely, I attempted going to the second pharmacy. Where I lived, there was three pharmacies, so I was spoilt for choice. But I went to the second pharmacy and asked the same question. And this time, the lady said, Yeah, sure. You know, I'll read it for you. And it was negative. And I remember feeling that frustration, you know, that unnecessary barrier again, like, why can't I read my pregnancy test result, when I can do my online banking, I can do my shopping, Tesco shopping online. But here I am in a professional position, but still can't read my pregnancy test. So that was always on the back of my mind.

And we engaged in a partnership with this company called Be My Eyes. And essentially, it's an app that blind people use to make a video call with a stranger. And there's about 4 million people who are volunteering on this app. And so I use Be My Eyes all the time. So in the morning, when I want to check whether my makeup's on properly, I call Be My Eyes and a random stranger answers the phone and I ask them, can you tell me if my makeup's on properly? And so I use I use that. But we then introduced this special help on Be My Eyes where instead of contacting a volunteer, you could contact the company directly. And that's where we then added a button called Clearblue. And when a blind person wants to take their pregnancy test now, they can call Clearblue via the Be My Eyes app, they get connected over a video call to a customer services person who is familiar with Clearblue, they know how it works. They can read them the instructions and explain how to carry out the test properly and then read the result.

And that means you can know whether you're pregnant without having to ask your family member. It's a very personal matter. And you don't really want to ask a friend or a family member, you want to know your news first. And so I brought that idea to the Be My Eyes team. And they, they just took it on board. And we plugged it in and got things going, gave the necessary training to everyone, and boom, we were live. And it's been many years now that that initiative's been running. And the feedback that the customer team have given me is that's the best innovation that they've done, you know, makes them feel so good that they can provide this type of service to blind women who want to know their pregnancy test results independently.

TS: 25:36

And is that available all over the world?

SL: 25:39

Yes.

TS: 25:40

So I was curious to know what you've learnt from these initiatives about what it takes to get buy in within an organization? And how do you find the balance between presenting the human case and the business case?

SL: 25:52

I think it's really important to demonstrate the problem to the decision makers, to the engineers, to the R&D, marketing folk, help them understand what is the problem today that people with disabilities are experiencing with your product. And then to show them the business building potential, if this was not a problem, you can grow your business by X amount, and then come come with a solution or an idea that they can pilot and work with you on that will actually solve that problem.

So for example, and I'll talk a little bit about digital, our websites were historically not very accessible for people with disabilities using assistive technology, like screen readers for blind people, or, you know, adaptive mice for people with dexterity challenges. And I brought the case forward to the company that, you know, by our sites not being accessible, we're excluding these millions of consumers every day, accessing information about our brands. So that was the problem. But obviously, it is a business building opportunity, every business wants to grow the number of users that are on their brand. So if you made your website accessible, you would, by default, increase the number of users that can come to through your door, right. And then came up with the solution and how we do that.

And it required us to, you know, first of all, create a policy in the company to say, Okay, anything that we build from now on will be accessible. And then we brought in all the infrastructure that will help them to do that to measure and govern this policy. So we brought in a system that can give us the accessibility score for our digital websites. And we went from less than twenty percent accessible to now more than eighty percent accessible, you know, by this automated tool. And we also hired three people with disabilities who are actually checking manually whether the website works for different disability types. And it's really incredible to see that we now have more and more people that can use our websites that will not have those barriers that maybe they faced five years ago.

Have there been any instances where you faced pushback or resistance to a particular initiative that you wanted to push forward?

Every time you do experience pushback, initially, when people don't understand the full picture, and they, you know, making things accessible, sometimes people just don't even understand the problem, because they've not been used to maybe engaging with people with disabilities, that people with disabilities haven't even crossed their mind. And so when you get into that situation, I think it's really important to build the disability confidence of that individual, of the team. And I do that through the disability challenge. We've developed a disability at work training that we're offering everyone in the company to take, which helps them understand how employees with disabilities can succeed at P&G. What are the accommodations that they need to maybe get depending on their disability? How can you support colleagues or how do you support managers or, you know, employees with disabilities in the company? So that really helps to break down the barriers.

And then what we're also doing is using our people with disabilities, to help our business understand some of the problems related to their products, their communications, our own offices and buildings, and help them to see what are the barriers and how we can overcome them, because most of the time, the barriers are not, they're not really necessary. You know, we can just with one click or with a with a bit of investment, we can remove barriers and make life so much more accessible for people with disabilities. That's kind of my purpose at P&G, I really want to remove all the barriers that prevent people accessing products and services. And I believe it can be done. And I believe that we're on that journey. And we've got a long way to go. But there's definitely great progress that's been made.

TS: 30:40

So you talked about disability confidence, and this is something that P&G talks about as well, having a disability confident culture. I was wondering how you would define that.

SL: 30:50

I think a disability confident culture is where everyone in the company is comfortable with disability. There's research that shows 65 percent of people avoid people with disabilities because they make them feel uncomfortable, right? So that's what we want to change inside of P&G. We want to make sure that everyone inside our company is disability confident, and can bring that confidence into whatever they are responsible for, whether it's creating products, whether it's marketing products, whether it's... You know, um, looking after our employees, our buildings, our plants. So we want everyone to feel confident when engaging with disabled consumers or employees. And it's a kind of journey that, that you go on. So as an individual with a disability, You go through that, you know, that Kübler Ross model where when you get diagnosed with a disability, you start, that's that grief process, you start off denial, no, I haven't got it, or you get angry or you're trying to find solutions to overcome the disability

. Um, eventually you get to a stage where you're, accept your disability and you're comfortable with who you are. It's not a linear process. I think it's circular, but that's the ideal state is when you feel comfortable with your disability. I, I'm very comfortable with my disability. I've accepted it and I, you know, I, I can live with it. You then have others who see you from the outside as someone with a disability. And that is, you know, that, that is on a spectrum as well. So you have some people who have never grown up with anyone with a disability, you know, disabled people are not in their, in their lives, in their homes, in their leadership teams, in the office. So they may view people with, you know, first of all, they don't exist. Or at best, you know, they may have pity for them or sympathy for them. and think, well, you know, that's a shame for that person. It's a shame. They may not be able to work. And they make these assumptions that disabled people can't do things, whatever that might be.

But eventually as you become more disability confident, you realize that disabled people are actually phenomenal problem solvers, great communicators, and they can do anything. that anyone else can do so long as the barriers are removed and quite often they actually can achieve great results despite barriers being in the way. And for P& G, I think it's really important that we continue building our disability confident culture and understand the value that disabled consumers and employees can bring to the business.

TS: 33:43

And I know that hiring people with disabilities is another area that you're passionate about. How do you feel about the progress that's been made in that area?

SL: 33:52

At P&G, I'm seeing that we're, we're beginning to make a lot of progress in hiring and progressing people with disabilities into the company. 20 years ago, I was probably the only one of two blind people that were in the company and that didn't change until about four or five years ago.

Now we're hiring many, many blind people. We've hired many people with different types of disabilities into the company and we're learning a lot. You know, we are learning. about how it's important to make our office environments accessible, how it's really important to make our systems, our work systems accessible for people so they can succeed, and also how, you know, the importance of building that disability confidence culture in the company.

So by bringing people in, we're able to learn. I don't think it's a case of ensuring our, you know, everything is fixed before we bring people in. It's a case of learning together, working through the barriers together, so that, you know, we can become a more accessible and inclusive employer. And there's great examples, you know, we've got, we're hiring people in every continent in the world, you know, every region of ours where you have got some initiative going, where we're hiring people either, you know, with autism or different types of disability. And it's really, it's really great to see. And I would love to see even more progress in this space.

TS: 35:30

Do you think accessibility and inclusive design are becoming mainstream?

SL: 35:37

Definitely, definitely, definitely. And they need to be. 20 percent of the world's population, we're a large, large minority, um, and more and more things are becoming accessible. I mean, there's a lot of technology out there. I was talking about the iPhone earlier. That's accessible out of the box.

You know, there's many technologies that I use on my laptop, completely accessible. With the tactile work that we're doing, my vision is that, you know, we put tactile symbols on all P& G products, you know, whether it's shampoo, conditioner, laundry detergent, toothpaste, whatever it might be, we will develop a system for all of our products so people can identify them through touch. so we have this vision of making our products, all of our communications accessible, our buildings, and our recruitment process completely accessible and inclusive. And we will, by doing that, we will be even more successful as a company. We will hire better people. We will create. More inclusive and superior products that really delight everyone, including people with disabilities.

So I think it's, I think it's a really good business building, um, driver and socially and, um, for all the ethical reasons, it's really important to do.

TS: 36:56

And what are the, what would you say are the remaining hurdles?

SL: 37:00

There's lots of remaining hurdles. I think we need to scale up on everything that we're doing, you know, so we've worked on a few brands, a few. projects, um, we need to make it part, it needs to become every day. Work that's on every product, every brand, every country, you know, we, we did our, um, audio description and captioning on our ads.

Now that was a big innovation that P&G came up with for our brands, uh, brand advertising in the UK. Many years ago, we then scaled it up to Spain and France and different countries, but we've realized that we can't do it alone. We need to bring industry with us and everyone should be doing it. It shouldn't just be one company that's doing it.

It just needs to be how business is done across the board. So we're formed an alliance where we're working with our competitors. We're working with the broadcast industry. Working with people, you know, in various domains to make something like audio description and captioning just be normal on all advertising.

TS: 38:23

So some people might conclude that, you know, P&G has been able to achieve all that it has because it's got the resources, but, you know, on the flip side, being a bigger company also brings other challenges. So what are the learnings that you'd want to share with companies of all sizes about developing inclusive products.

SL: 38:45

I think the biggest thing is to build it in from the beginning. Think about this consumer base, whatever the service or product that you're creating, think about it from the very beginning, because if you try and add it on at the end, it's going to be complex. It's going to be expensive and most likely you'll not do it.

So let me give you an example. our laundry pods were very accessible for. Consumers with disabilities, however, we had to make our box, our plastic laundry box, child safe.

And as a result, our laundry box was almost impossible to open, you know, especially by people with hand dexterity challenges. And we were designing a new box that was going to be sustainable. And just at the right time, uh, we got, you know, I asked the, the, the general manager at the time to make it accessible and child safe.

And at first, you know, he thought, how is it impossible? You can't make a box accessible and child safe. And I had this conversation where I explained, well, we don't know how to do it, but you, you don't need to worry about that. Just give this problem to the designers, to the engineers who are. You know, very well qualified to solve a problem, but we need to just put it in the scope of our project and that's what we did.

And as a result, we have this incredible laundry box that is child safe and accessible for people with disabilities. It's a real, you know, it's really superior. And if you've not tried it, I really encourage you to, to try it. It's a real delighter to open. It also contains The NaviLens code I was mentioning about on the top, as well as a new tactile symbol that we developed for laundry detergent, which is like a, imagine a square with a hollow circle inside.

And that gives you, that reminds you of a washing machine. And then we put the four tactile stripes below it to say that this is washing your laundry. So we've developed that. So this box that we've developed is now we developed it with accessibility in mind from the get go. And as a result, we created an award winning box that is really puts a smile on anyone's face when they interact with it.

And so I really encourage any business, big or small, to really put accessibility from the beginning into their project briefs, into the scope, and then continue to invite people with disabilities to give you feedback during the development process and help to refine. And improve the accessibility of that product or service.

TS: 41:34

And what can people do as individuals?

SL: 41:40

I think whatever role or job you're in, there must be something that you can do to make something accessible for someone. everyone has the power to do something useful for someone to make their lives easier, whether it's, you know, just getting to know someone and understanding the barriers that might be they might be experiencing.

Or asking the question, depending on your role, what is it that I need to do for people who are blind that might be using my product? People who have dexterity challenges or learning difficulties, will they be able to use what I'm offering? And to give you a, uh, an example, I, my kids bought me cinema tickets for a new local cinema that was opened in my town.

It's only like 400 yards from my house. And they got me that for Mother's Day. And we, we turned up at the cinema. I use a audio description, which is a service that you can turn on at the cinema or on your TV that starts describing. The film, um, you know, it, it describes the visual actions on the screen and most cinemas should have this service enabled and this new cinema promised to have this service enabled.

But when we turned up, they said, sorry, we don't have the headset for you. And I remember thinking, I never watch a movie without audio description now, but this time I'll watch it because I don't want my kids to feel left out. And so, but my kids turned around and said. Mummy, let's go home. Don't want to watch the movie because it didn't have audio description.

And that was, you know, suddenly like I ended up in tears at the cinema because I felt, you know, so helpless at that point thinking that God, all, all they needed was a headset and they haven't got it. And now I'm. Like, having to be in this awkward situation with, in front of my children. And just as I left the cinema, I said to the staff, how do you think I feel?

Like, you know, what they didn't realize was they were not only taking precious moments away from me, but they were also losing out on potential revenue. I mean, I would go back again and again as a mum with my kids to that cinema. So we left and the next day they called me and said, we've got the headset.

And we'd like you and your whole family to come and watch the movie for free. And that was something that just an individual or two did at that cinema. And they transformed an extremely negative experience and where they got no money to an extremely positive experience where we go back again and again to the cinema.

And now all their movies are audio described. So it's, it's a really good experience. So I hope that helps.

TS: 44:20

That's a great story. Thank you so much for sharing that. So how can people follow you and learn more about your work?

SL: 44:30

I'm on LinkedIn. I post quite regularly, I would say. So you can follow me on LinkedIn. And also there's a lot of, uh, conferences that take place in the UK around the world about disability. And I would really encourage people to, to, to go out and meet people with disabilities at these conferences and see what other companies are doing as well, because quite often a lot of other companies attend these conferences.

So you have a good mix of. Industry and, uh, people with disabilities coming and it's a really good way to build your network and knowledge and it doesn't then feel overwhelming because you just have a, a very big family of accessibility people and it's a very contagious thing. Accessibility, once you're in, you really, uh, end up having so many friends across so many industries. It's really well networked. And you're never alone because everyone bends over backwards to help you.

TS: 45:30

That was Sam Latif from P&G. Thanks for listening to this episode. If you found it insightful, I hope you’ll come back for more conversations like this. I’d be grateful if you could also rate the show or leave a review wherever you’re listening and please share it with someone who would find it useful. I’m Tosin Sulaiman. Thanks for joining me on Made For Us.

SL:: 45:54

The book recommendation, I absolutely love Shantaram by David Gregory, I think. It's a fictional book based on a real story and it's really, really, really big. And I listened to it on Audible and it's a really good read.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai