Growing up with a severely sight impaired (SSI) mother, I quickly learnt that the beauty industry doesn’t accommodate disabled people. As a child, I remember being my mum’s ‘eyes’ in beauty stores, intensely scanning every aisle to find what she needed. Then, we’d go home and I’d line up her products up in order of use. It was impossible for her to shop for and use beauty products independently, and it’s the same story in 2023.
While brands are clearly making more effort to be inclusive and accessible — from Gucci and Fenty Beauty using visibly disabled models, to L’Oréal inventing a motorised device to help those with limited mobility apply makeup — the needs of the 270 million blind and visually impaired people worldwide are still not being met.
New technology, like Estée Lauder’s voice-enabled makeup assistant app, is a step in the right direction, but brands are entirely skipping over vital design and customer service flaws. For example, all packaging should have tactile or braille labels, all beauty retailer websites should be screen reader friendly and have ALT text, and all stores should offer disabled people free, thorough assistance, but that’s not the case.
We can’t force companies to change overnight, so for now, blind and SSI people are left to work around the industry’s accessibility deficits.
As a beauty journalist, I’ve tried products from hundreds of different brands. I pass a lot of these on to my mother, who gives me detailed feedback. After lots of trial and error, we’ve managed to get her beauty routine down to a fine art. And while there are no beauty brands that are 100% accessible, there are definitely a few that do the job. So, without further ado, here are the six most accessible beauty brands for blind and SSI people.
Herbal Essences
Only 7% of blind people use braille these days, so while we should applaud brands that use braille labelling on their packaging (we love you L’Occitane, Blind Beauty, and Bioderma), raised tactile labelling is the future. In 2020, Herbal Essences added raised lines to its shampoo bottles (think ‘S’ for stripes) and raised dots to its conditioner bottles (think ‘C’ for circles) to help blind and SSI consumers differentiate between the two. More of this please, beauty brands.
ILIA Beauty
Californian brand ILIA Beauty (available at Sephora UK) is surprisingly accessible. Its multi-purpose products dramatically streamline your kit, making it quicker and easier to find what you’re looking for.
For example, the brand’s famous Super Serum Skin Tint provides you with skincare, sun protection, and base makeup all in one little bottle, and it’s super easy to blend in with your fingers. Oh, and every product comes in differently shaped packaging, so you can immediately tell your blusher from your bronzer without any special labelling.
Trinny London
I’m going to make a bold statement: Trinny London is one of the most accessible brands for blind people. Its stackable packaging helps to keep all your makeup in one, chronologically ordered unit, and every product is so lightweight and buildable that you don’t need to worry about being too heavy-handed.
Although its identical circular pots make it impossible to differentiate between products without sight (which could be improved upon), you can enlist the help of a sighted friend to solve this problem with braille or audio labels.
The brand also offers one-to-one makeup appointments, where an expert can shade match you and offer application advice. The services cost between £25 and £60, but the money is 100% redeemable against any Trinny London purchase (so you’re being charged for the products rather than the assistance).
Benefit Cosmetics
Benefit Cosmetics is a favourite in the blind community. Its blushers and bronzers have unique smells, which blind content creator Claire Sisk (@canseecantsee on TikTok) says helps her to tell popular products like Gold Rush, Dallas, Sugar Bomb, Dandelion, and Hoola apart without labelling them.
On top of that, all of Benefit’s bestsellers — including the various eyebrow products and mascaras — have totally different packaging, so it’s possible to own them all and still be able to identify which is which when rummaging through your makeup bag.
CeraVe
CeraVe’s skincare products are a good choice for blind and SSI people because the types of product (cleansers, serums, moisturisers, eye creams, sun protection products and body creams) all come in unique packaging. You can keep it simple and buy your entire skincare routine from CeraVe without needing to label it.
The brand is also effective, affordable, and easy to get your hands on at your local Boots or Superdrug. It certainly ticks a lot of boxes.
Pantene
Pantene is the first beauty brand to address the hurdles blind people face when shopping in-store. Last year, the brand partnered with NaviLens, a system that uses a smartphone app and barcodes to help blind and SSI people find their way around.
The app can detect NaviLens codes on products from up to 12 metres away, find an item on a shelf, and read out the information on the packaging — all without pointing the camera at the code. Pantene has put these clever codes on its Silky & Glowing collection in every Superdrug store, and the collection is doubly accessible because every product is a different shape. Well done, Pantene.
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