Haleon turned ordinary barcodes into spoken medicine labels

Consumer healthcare packaging depends on tiny visual text, which is risky for people with visual impairments or low literacy. The One Show entry said 93% of visually impaired people felt health products were not accessible enough and almost one in five had taken the wrong dosage because they could not read packaging effectively.

Haleon and Grey New York avoided a slow physical-pack redesign. They used the existing barcode as the trigger and worked with Microsoft's Seeing AI app so a scan could read the product's safety and usage information aloud.

WARC reported a 10x increase in app downloads, 4x growth in unique user scans and a 40% increase in brand familiarity. The One Show gave Access Codes a 2024 Merit, and D&AD listed the work in its 2023 archive.

The barcode is already on every pack

It used a mark already present on thousands of products.

The accessibility layer could change digitally as label language changed.

It met users in a known accessibility app rather than forcing a new app.

It solved a safety problem while giving Haleon a credible brand proof.

A universal but boring identifier can become an interface. Look for the infrastructure already printed, scanned or carried before inventing new packaging.

Access Codes became an award-recognized example of inclusive packaging because it did not wait for a packaging overhaul. The same pattern can travel to any product category where critical label information is trapped in small print.