Discrimination against shoppers who cant read

Sagz_2

jack_of_all wrote: »

I can read, but I shop for some people who cant read and live on benefits. I would like to buy them some of the best value supermarket brands but often I can't because they don't know what is in the packaging.

Rather than looking for the shop to help maybe you could make your own re-useable photo lables to help the people you shop for?

jack_of_all

Bryanb has hit the nail on the head. I shop for people, I dont shop with them. Then they prepare their own meals at home. I did complain to Asda about 2 years ago and they were very receptive of my comments. About 1 year ago a simple image appeared on some of the own budget products, just simple cartoon like images not photo printing, they have them on most of there tins like sweetcorn and beans, but its not happening to all their products and sometimes the packaging changes back to no image for a couple of months. It has made a real difference in making their benfits stretch further. I will look to doing something more about this because Ive seen the difference and that it is possible with the basic colour printing they use any way, Have any Asda shoppers noticed this, imaging you could not read, would you rely on the little cartoon image of a single baked bean if you wanted beans on toast, or would you just have peas on toast instead if you opened the wrong tin. I don't know if the changes at Asda were a result of my complaint. I'm glad to see people are interested and commenting, This was my first post and has made me decide to try and do something more about it but i'm not the cleverest person myself any advice how to do this would be great, disabled people can do more things for themselves if a fundamental approach is taken,thanks

eranou

or carry a pen and just draw a little picture of what's inside after you have bought it

jack_of_all

Norbertsmum, I do use my own picture lables somtimes, but it's a pain when you have so much else to do, I am thinking about others who don't have such support.

DCFC79

eranou wrote: »

or carry a pen and just draw a little picture of what's inside after you have bought it

just what i was going to say

wssla00

I find this really interesting actually as in certain parts of Africa and Asia it is common practice to put a picture of the product on the front because of the high amount of illiteracy in those areas. In fact there was a famous case of a big brand of baby food having to be recalled and redesigned as they had put a baby on the front and it was considered bad taste because of this.

Hope you can get somewhere, however I wonder if it will change here.

chalkysoil

I too find it interesting. The RNIB has a site for blind people with downloadable research articles into similar problems, like the basics packaging looking very similar on different products for people with almost no vision. The Joseph Rowntree trust organisation has some research etc on problems encountered by the elderly. I think there may be other groups all thinking the same as you. Some solutions are at almost no cost to the shops etc. Like when buses brought in yellow hand rails instead of black so they were easier to see, but if no one tells them I suppose they don't think of it. Many years ago my MIL worked for Safeways and would bring home tins that had lost their labels entirely, we would stand in the kitchen shaking them and trying to guess what they were. We were wrong about 90% of the time and would end up with fruit instead of vegetables...

JemmaBe

I have complete sympathy for those who are blind or partially sighted having problems in shopping in supermarkets, although this is not the issue being brought up here.

But for people who can't read, my sympathy dwindles slightly. When I go abroad (including countries without the same alphabet - russia for one) I can perfectly adequately navigate a supermarket. I can see what is in the packet, or if I can't I look around and see what kind of isle I'm in. Value crisps in england, are clearly in an isle full of crisps. Although they don't have pictures explicitly stating they are crisps, it is fairly obvious they are crisps and not nuts, which come in a small packet, and are heavier.

Even things such as peas and sweetcorn which feel the same, are obviously yellow or green, even in the value products you can see through the packaging.

We should encourage people to become literate, which as far as I'm aware is NOT a recognised disability, and where dyslexia or otherwise is the reason the discrimination is in the barrier to them learning to read.

funkymonkey849

I'm confused as nearly all the tesco value range have pictures of the product on???

Unless it's the likes of asda/sainsburys etc but I don't shop there so I don't know

geordie_joe

wssla00 wrote: »

I find this really interesting actually as in certain parts of Africa and Asia it is common practice to put a picture of the product on the front because of the high amount of illiteracy in those areas. In fact there was a famous case of a big brand of baby food having to be recalled and redesigned as they had put a baby on the front and it was considered bad taste because of this.

How did they feed their babies then? If there wasn't a picture of a baby on the package they wouldn't know it was baby food.