BE CAREFUL, DO NOT TAKE ME!
By: Javier Alejandro Turconi
Tags: Design, Designer, Accessibility, Inclusion, Accesibility

Ring Ring…

- Hello?

- Hi son, I’m a mom. It seems to me that I put another drop on my eye, and now it burns a lot.

- Nooooo! How did it happen? Did not you notice the package before?

OK, let’s make a stop. My mother was 77 years old at the time, I lived with my father (another 77 years old), and I was recently operated on by one eye for glaucoma. From the other eye, he had already lost his vision.

In case it sounded bad, my question was not a challenge, nor a call for attention, but the lack of understanding before the seriousness of the fact.

How could someone make a mistake in a box and / or jar, in a situation that implied nothing more and nothing less than the care of his only healthy eye?

Later, after having gone to a medical clinic on duty at midnight, and to check that everything was more or less well, I set out to see what drops and medicines my mother had within reach, and if I came to understand the differences between one and another.

WHAT A SURPRISE!

In a very well-arranged box, there were no less than 10 different packs of drops. And I say different because I took the trouble to read each container one by one. Of course, many of them were from the same laboratory, but different medications.

No need to inquire further, the problem jumped. TO SIMPLE VIEW ALL THE BOXES WERE EQUAL.

My astonishment was huge, not understanding why eye drops, (understand that people who put this type of medication, may not be enjoying fully full sense of sight), have packaging with almost no notable differentiator.

Photo: Packs of flasks of eye drops, which show very little differentiation in their design.

It seemed the game of 7 errors, where you have to concentrate to see the differences between them.

In this course of lack of differentiation, I went to see the boxes of medicines that I had in a bag inside a piece of furniture … I think there is no need for more comments for the reader.

Example picture: Roemmers laboratory medicine boxes.

You find … I started to wonder: Is this the maximum effort that we can provide from our profession as graphic designers? Why do laboratories solve the identity of their different medicines in such a homogeneous way? Is there some hidden secret that we ignore? Is there any regulation from the State that states that they should be like this? This last question was answered in part when after consulting the text of the provision that regulates “how should the type of presentation of the medicine boxes in Argentina be.”

Scanned image of the Nro 8277 Provision of 2011 of the ANMAT. (Argentina)

In this, it is evident the lack of specific parameters recommended by the State, towards the companies that produce and market the medicines.

This is where I would like to emphasize. If we had a more punctual regulation, think more about people, put yourself in the place of the other. We will surely obtain a more secure access to the use of medicines.

The boxes, the blister (or bottle in the case of liquids); the tablets and even the prospect are accessibility barriers that can be sanitized.

We are graphic designers, and to a greater or lesser extent, our work demands that we be creative. Through the generation of ideas, we provoke discussions and interpellate society. These tools are what will allow us to make people change their look. Maybe we look for answers for problems like these, and eventually we will not find them. But our obligation is to raise the questions, especially if we want to have a more accessible and inclusive world.

Leaving the debate open will allow us to improve as a society.

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