Inclusive packaging must survive full use cycle, accessibility advocate urges

The packaging industry is gradually designing for consumers with limited dexterity in mind, but innovation has mainly targeted primary closures, such as twist caps, squeeze bottles, and triggers. 

Adam Watson, founder of The Sanctuary, a US-based nonprofit focused on early-stage disability recovery, tells Packaging Insights that packaging must be accessible beyond the “first successful interaction” with a primary closure and continue throughout a product’s use. 

Instead, for Watson, accessible packaging is the ability of a consumer to “complete, repeat, maintain, and recover the entire task with dignity and without silently transferring the unfinished work to somebody else.”

The notion of “unfinished work” is important to Watson’s design metrics, which outlines that “the most common failure” in packaging design is, despite the initial success of opening a package, one hand is still needed to stabilize the package, while the other performs the next step. 

“A package should not be called accessible merely because a user can defeat the first closure once. The complete question is whether the user can open, dispense the intended amount, reclose, store, clean, repeat the task, and recover when something slips or spills,” he says. 

In 2018, a brachial plexus injury left Watson’s right arm without “useful” function. Having previously worked in emergency services, he now evaluates packaging across the full sequence: transport, stabilization, seals, caps, dispensing, dosing, and reading instructions while handling the product.

He advocates for the complete-use-cycle testing of accessible packaging to ensure it is functional beyond the primary closure. 

Independently usable packaging

In 2024, a study published in Disability and Rehabilitation found that inaccessible packaging could undermine independence and cause psychological distress or food avoidance. 

As Watson notes, certain primary closures can often reduce independence as they require additional stability. Applications include flexible pouches, pump and trigger bottles, jars, squeeze bottles, and cartons. 

In the case of pump bottles, he says that “the control may be easy to press, but the container moves, tips, or rotates when the same hand must also stabilize it,” and for squeeze bottles, “dispensing is possible, but controlling the amount and closing can fail.” 

Watson underscores: “When a user must employ teeth, knees, body weight, fixed furniture, improvised clamps, or another person, the package has transferred part of its operating burden outside the design.”

He points to workaround solutions for resealable food pouches and pump bottles.

“A resealable food pouch can often be torn open one-handed, sometimes by anchoring it against the body or a surface. The zipper then requires alignment and pressure across the full width. When it is not sealed, another person closes it, or the contents are transferred to a different container.” 

He continues: “A pump bottle can be activated one-handed, but on a wet counter, the bottle slides or tips. Another person stabilizes it, or the user wedges it into a corner, adds a nonslip base, or permanently transfers the product into another dispenser.”

These workarounds are “important evidence,” stresses Watson, of the need for complete-use-cycle testing of packaging solutions. 

Full product testing

Packaging Insights recently spoke to Amcor, Tilt Beauty, and Etia about how inclusive design is moving from a niche “special project” to a core pillar of packaging innovation strategy.

Accessible packaging often undergoes testing to determine whether it is suitable for a wide range of dexterity limitations, but Watson argues it is not extensive enough. 

“Testing should record independent completion, time, force, reach, and grip demands, spills, product loss, failed attempts, improvised workarounds, assistance required, and whether the task can be repeated when the user is tired, wet, cold, rushed, or working in a confined space,” he notes. 

Meanwhile, recovery should be tested deliberately: “What happens if the cap drops, the pouch tears unevenly, the pump locks, the seal only partly opens, or the package tips over?” Watson asks. 

On top of this, disabled consumers should be involved in the design of primary closures, not just in the approval of pre-designed systems. 

“A representative group should include people with different combinations of limb loss or impairment, reduced grip, limited reach, tremor, pain, low vision, and cognitive or sensory differences.”

Watson concludes: “Participants should be compensated and should help define the task sequence, failure states, and success criteria. Designers, engineers, and human-factors specialists can then translate those observations into measurable requirements and verify them across repeated real-world use.”

Earlier this year, we spoke to creative technologist, designer, and chartered engineer Jude Pullen on why packaging designers should explore “fringes,” such as new cultures, accessibility, or uncovering needs that were previously unrecognized. He highlighted that accessible solutions should not be treated as “marginal” but can be reframed as a benefit for everyone.