Imagine having limited
or no vision. It is unlikely that you would
be enjoying this Bulletin, indeed you would
probably not be collecting stamps. Now imagine
suffering with arthritis in the fingers.
Manual dexterity would be impaired, possibly
to the point where turning these pages would
be difficult, frustrating and painful.
There are
around 60 million people in Britain – 20
million of whom are aged over 50 and 10
million of them have a disability, according
to RNIB. As most people use postal services,
a large percentage of consumers would find
improvements to the construction of stamp
books beneficial. It is against this backdrop
that Royal Mail decided to improve this
aspect of its service. The introduction
of self-adhesive paper and withdrawal of
£1 and £2 books following vending
rationalisation assisted the revamp process.
It is close
on a year since the new books were introduced
and readers may have purchased copies for
their collections or for use on mail. It
is difficult not to be impressed by them,
as the level of detail that went into their
design and production helped guarantee success
for this increasingly popular item that
is sold in vast quantities every year. It
is a sad fact, though, that many customers
will not even have noticed the changes,
although perhaps that is a part of the success
of the project. So, dig out one of your
stamp books now before reading on and take
note of the improvements made.
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The Matrix. No, not the film trilogy, but
the surplus self-adhesive paper that surrounded
the stamps of earlier books. Some countries
have never had to contend with a matrix,
for their stamps ‘butted-up’ to each other
and did not have surplus paper. This is
because the stamps often had wavy-edge separation
that linked each item without a gap between,
or had straight edges without perforations.
However, Royal Mail specified that
its self-adhesive stamps should resemble
the traditionally perforated versions, requiring
die-cutters that incorporated spaces between
each stamp.
When the
matrix is left on, it makes it extremely
difficult to remove each stamp from its
back cover, so this was first priority for
the project team. Also, some customers had
the anti-social habit of sticking the matrix
to Post Office™ counters. There is, however,
a thin vertical strip of the matrix left
on each pane at the far right, providing
a space for the printer to record the cylinder
number. A further added benefit of removing
the matrix is that it enables people with
visual impairments to feel more easily how
many stamps are left, ensuring that replacement
stock is obtained prior to running out.
Books of
six stamps also have an inside front cover
that bears an unprinted label the full size
of the cover. (Considering the security
that used to surround the destruction of
any surplus paper in the pre-self-adhesive
era, it is perhaps surprising that this
paper is not defaced in some way, or utilised
for publicity purposes.) Books for overseas
use incorporate airmail stickers that make
use of the wasted paper and avoid the need
for a customer to search for such a sticker
– or worse still, not use one.
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Cover colour. The covers are the colour of the
stamps contained within, i.e. blue for second
class and gold for first. This enables instant
recognition of the contents by people with
visual impairments without the need to open
the book to view the stamps. However, with
7% of British males being red-green colour
blind, it was important that colour alone
was not used to clearly identify contents.
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Inset covers. The front cover is shorter in
width than the back cover. This enables
easier access to the contents for people
with arthritis and simply involved a different
folding and creasing position of the spine
by the printer.
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Notches. One for first class and two for
second class, notches allow visually impaired
customers to ‘feel’ the value and are known
as a tactile marking. They are located in
the right hand vertical edge of the back
cover towards the top. Braille would have
been inappropriate, as most blind people
do not read this language. Notches also
assist, visually impaired people with diabetes,
for they often suffer from a loss of sensitivity
in their fingertips and so they may be unable
to read Braille.
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Perforations. In accordance with Royal Mail’s
stamp security policy, the stamps bear an
elliptical perforation on both vertical
edges towards the bottom. This feature has
the bonus of helping visually impaired customers
to orientate the stamp correctly. Posting
a letter with the Sovereign’s head upside
down may not seem to be of importance, but
when did you last receive a letter from
a sighted person showing disrespect to Her
Majesty?
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Font size.
The number of stamps within the book and
their face value is depicted in a font size
of 60 point (bold for the value, non-bold
for number of stamps).
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Contact points. The outside back covers bear three
customer helpline methods: telephone, web
and textphone. These contact details ensure
that all customers can pursue their enquiries
with ease.
There is
one further development that had been proposed
at the time of the revamp that never came
to fruition. It was clearly the most radical
feature and would have resulted in a new
definitive design for the first time in
almost forty years.
I recall
overhearing in the coffee shop at Stampex
a couple of years ago a journalist discussing
a Royal Mail stamp briefing that he had
just attended. It appears that they had
been handed books of six stamps with a new
design for the first and second class values.
These dummy stamps comprised a very large
1 or 2, with the portrait of The Queen reduced
to a tiny size in the top left-hand corner
in the normal flame or blue colours of the
time. Nothing further was overheard and
I awaited their launch with interest. As
you will know, no such stamps have yet appeared
although the Royal National Institute of
the Blind (RNIB) would surely approve.
The production
of these prototype books set me thinking
about why they had been created. I was later
to ascertain that they had been used at
a number of focus groups, in liaison with
Royal Mail, with CDT Design (a leader in
brand, corporate and environmental identities)
who developed the stamps and stamp books,
the RNIB at its London premises, and Arthritis
Care at their London Headquarters. A range
of people with various levels of visual
impairment and arthritis were invited to
offer their observations on all the features
proposed for the stamp books. The RNIB forum
comprised part of a nationwide volunteer
evaluation network of 250 persons and included
young and old, those in and out of work,
blind and sighted people, i.e. a good cross-section
of the British public. Their feedback was
to prove invaluable to Royal Mail when deciding
the final format. There were no user trials
undertaken.
The less
charitable reader may argue that Royal Mail
was merely carrying out its obligations
under the Disability Discrimination Act,
or DDA, of 1995 as introduced in 1998. However,
it is clear that the organisation is determined
to exceed what it must do. Aside from the
provision of large print, Braille, CD-ROM
and audio versions of key items of literature,
it has also worked to improve access to
its premises and introduced new, clearer,
letterbox collection plates. Other enhancements
relate to, for example, the introduction
of induction-loop hearing devices, low level
counters, and the provision of ‘helping
hands’ packs of supportive equipment to
all Post Office™ directly managed branches
and agents. These comprise pen grips, signature
guides, clipboard and hand-held magnifier
as well as improvements to the queuing systems
in Post Offices. All of these enhancements
help project the caring image of one of
Britain’s largest retailers.
Avril Hart,
Royal Mail’s Head of Disability Policy,
and Barry Robinson, previously Design Director
at Royal Mail Stamps and Collectibles, together
with Paul Snee from RNIB’s Sensory Design
Services (SDS) who had been seconded to
work with Royal Mail, championed the project
in liaison with Mike Dempsey, a founding
partner of CDT (Carroll, Dempsey and Thirkell)
Design. Avril and Paul are both passionate
about their roles and can be justifiably
proud of these major design improvements.
In view of the benefits that the unadopted
stamp designs would have brought to so many
consumers, it is disappointing that they
were not adopted. Perhaps the introduction
of these stamps could be reconsidered?
Special thanks
are due to Paul for the considerable background
information that he provided during the
course of writing this article. SDS is an
RNIB ‘inclusive design’ consultancy based
outside Peterborough. They offer their design
services to manufacturers and service providers
across a variety of sectors, helping them
to make reasonable adjustments towards compliance
with the DDA.
SDS’s influence
on the design of a product is crucial if
it is to be accessible to all, i.e. not
just the visually impaired or disabled but
older people and non-disabled alike. The
BT ‘Big Button’ telephone (where its target
of selling 64,000 units in 18 months was
met in a mere three months) is another commercial
example of why RNIB hopes that Royal Mail
will continue to adopt inclusive design
principles in other areas of its business.
Thanks also
go to Avril for the valuable improvements
that she made to the manuscript, especially
with regards to the design aspects and the
use of the prototype books (which are illustrated
here exclusively for the first time thanks
to Avril’s loan of examples to our Editor).
Without her major contribution to this article,
the accuracy and extent of detail would
have been much less.
There is
visual evidence with this stamp book project
that with a little thought and effort, millions
of customers can benefit - and it’s difficult
to disagree with that viewpoint.
(Published
in the British Philatelic Bulletin, June
2004).
Subsequently updated and republished
in the GBDSBSC's Bookmark Journal, 2004
 Page
Version: 1.1, 2012. All material Copyright ©
2000-Date Glenn H Morgan FRPSL.
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