Easy Does It: Packaging That Works for Every UK Customer

A pack that cannot be opened is a product that cannot be used. For a substantial and growing share of UK shoppers — older customers, people with reduced grip strength or arthritis, and people living with sight loss — the sealed film pouch or tightly crimped carton is a barrier long before the contents are ever assessed. The commercial case for addressing this is unglamorous but sound: a wider addressable market, fewer avoidable complaints, fewer returns, and a brand remembered at the kitchen table rather than at the kerbside.

Accessibility as a market question, not just a compliance one

Successive government surveys have put the number of disabled people in the UK at around 16 million, roughly one in five of the population, and the over-65s continue to make up a rising share of household spending. Add the ordinary frictions of daily life — opening a pack one-handed while holding a phone, reading a label in a dimly lit hallway, deciphering an ingredient list without reading glasses — and the case widens further.

UK law does not prescribe a specific easy-open standard for consumer packaging, but the Equality Act 2010 requires service providers to make reasonable adjustments for disabled customers, and the general product safety regime expects instructions and warnings to be clear and legible. Brands selling into the EU should also note the European Accessibility Act, whose obligations for many consumer products began applying in 2025; e-commerce packaging that crosses borders now sits within that frame. The useful reference point for designers is BS EN ISO 17480, the accessible design guidance for ease of opening, which sets out the familiar sequence: identify, open, handle, read, understand.

Where standard packs quietly fail

Most failures cluster in four places. Opening: induction-sealed necks under a screw cap, clamshells that require scissors, flow-wrap with a tear notch printed a centimetre away from the actual perforation. Handling: tabs too small for a thumb and forefinger, caps with shallow knurling, sachets with no grip point. Reading: 6pt type reversed out of a photographic background, green-on-red allergen panels, ingredient blocks set in condensed capitals. Understanding: instructions written as a paragraph rather than a sequence, with no visual cue for the step that matters.

Low-cost fixes worth making before the next print run

Align the mechanics with the graphics. A tear notch that does not correspond to a real perforation teaches customers to reach for a knife. Test the physical open on the finished substrate, then print the indicator where the failure actually occurs.

Set a legibility floor. Ten point for body copy on small packs, generous leading, and a contrast ratio comfortably above the minimum rather than exactly at it. San-serif faces at regular weight outperform condensed light type at any size.

Use texture as a signal. Where braille is impractical on a short run, an embossed or spot-UV icon — a raised droplet, a raised triangle for a tear point — gives a tactile cue at negligible cost. Consistency matters more than sophistication: one recognisable opening cue across a range.

Treat allergens as navigation, not small print. The UK's labelling rules on emphasised allergens and on precautionary allergen labelling are well known, but legibility is where brands still slip. Bold, boxed, and consistently positioned on every SKU in the range.

Replace paragraphs with steps. Three numbered steps with simple line pictograms will outperform a dense block of prose for every customer, not only those who need it. A QR code to a 30-second video is a sensible supplement, never a substitute for on-pack clarity.

The e-commerce consequence

Distance selling raises the stakes. UK consumers have a 14-day cancellation right on most online purchases, and a pack that must be destroyed to be opened makes a return unnecessarily awkward — for the customer and for the retailer absorbing the cost. Similarly, a pouch that splits under a determined pull generates damage claims and replacement postage that a slightly stronger seal and a clearer tear line would have avoided.

Accessible packs also reduce the small, corrosive frictions that depress repeat purchase: the customer who cannot reseal a cereal liner, the one who needs two people to open a gift box, the one who gives up on a subscription because the sachets defeat them. None of these generates a complaint loud enough to reach the brand, which is precisely why they are easy to overlook.

A pre-print test that costs almost nothing

Before signing off artwork, run the pack past five people who were not involved in its design, including at least one over 70 and one who wears glasses only occasionally. Ask them to open it in a normal kitchen, in ordinary light, without instruction or demonstration — then time it. Repeat with a pair of washing-up gloves on. Wipe the print with a damp cloth and check that the lot code and allergen panel survive. If any of the five hesitates, the fix is almost always in the artwork, the perforation position or the cap geometry, and it is far cheaper now than after the run is on the shelf.

Accessibility is rarely a matter of expensive tooling. It is a matter of deciding, early in the brief, that the pack should be openable by someone other than the person who designed it.