A clear vision: Insight at the RNIB

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What comes to mind when you think of a blind person? There are countless stereotypes many people have, most of which do not represent the reality of living with sight loss. Campaigning organisations have sought to address this issue and combat misguided views of life as a blind or partially sighted person.

For more than 150 years, the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB) has sought to help blind and partially sighted people lead as full a life as possible, and aims to counteract false perceptions of what life is like with sight loss.

The charity has embraced the second part of its purpose fully in recent years, embarking on a rebrand and shift in focus in 2018, with a resulting emphasis on fighting misconceptions and stereotypes of blind and partially sighted people. It dropped some of its services as it looked at how it could make the biggest difference to people with sight loss across the country.

“A lot of our work is around making the world a more accessible place for blind and partially sighted people, and that stems a lot from how businesses offer their services and making sure that diversity, inclusion and accessibility are embedded in service providers,” says Hilary Ingleton, head of research and insight at RNIB.

“It is a huge and broad remit, and the breadth of what we cover is quite mind-blowing sometimes.”

Ingleton has worked for the charity since 2019 and leads its 11-strong research team. She joined in the wake of the charity’s rebrand, which included a new tagline – ‘Seeing differently’ – and a logo that uses a font resembling an eye test. The rebrand cost £70,000 and included work with creative agency The&Partnership. Public perception has continued to be tracked by ICM Unlimited, following on from a research project by Versiti.

Misconceptions

The rebrand was partially the result of Versiti’s project (see boxout), which sought to understand some of the views held by the public about the sight-loss community. It found a number of stereotypes, particularly around the kinds of jobs that blind and partially sighted people could take on.

“There’s not overt prejudice and ‘othering’ of blind and partially sighted people, as there are for some other minority groups,” Ingleton explains. “The issue is a lack of exposure, which leads to a lack of understanding and awareness. People don’t know how to help if they see blind or partially sighted people in the street.”

A lot of that is to do with role models, but Ingleton says the situation is getting better. To help the public see blind and partially sighted people as normal individuals who simply have conditions affecting their eyesight, the charity launched an advertising campaign featuring humorous stories. One example was: “Glaucoma didn’t stop me going to the gym. The bar on the way did.”
Other adverts in the series were in a similar vein, showing a range of professionals – such as lawyers and personal trainers – with eyesight conditions, to try to create new role models and combat prejudices, as well as simply show daily life as a blind person. One included an Amazon Alexa telling someone with sight loss what the weather was like as they got ready for work.

Ingleton says the rebrand was the culmination of a period of re-evaluation of the charity’s operating model, sparked by Versiti’s research. “A lot of the changes that came through the rebrand were us, as an organisation, taking a long hard look at what we did – and, historically, our main focus was on delivering services to blind and partially sighted people,” she adds.
“While that is incredibly valuable, it is not particularly sustainable, and does not address the root causes of the issues faced. The rebrand was recognising the importance of those public attitudes and the fact we needed societal change. The branding and campaign came out of that thinking.”

Building insight

Charities are organisations with a great deal of expertise, but often focus on the cause or services ahead of modern administrative techniques. “When I arrived, our knowledge was on a selection of hard disks around the organisation,” says Ingleton. “It wasn’t managed at all. People used to say we didn’t have a lot of insight, but, actually, it was scattered all over the place.”

The solution was a central insight hub, which – while common in many other organisations – was new for the RNIB. To build on the hub, Ingleton’s team set up a quarterly newsletter to disseminate recent research and findings throughout the charity, while a quarterly briefing for the senior team offers an overview of ongoing work and an opportunity to discuss findings.
“The invite comes from our chief executive, rather than us, so there is a real sense that it is something that is prioritised and important,” adds Ingleton. A staff-wide meeting is also in the pipeline.

The RNIB carries out much of its work internally, particularly when evaluating projects and conducting secondary and primary analysis. There is work with a small number of research agencies – such as Versiti, ICM and Good Innovation – and academics on individual projects, and YouGov runs the brand-tracking function.

According to Ingleton, the charity sector is very specialist, often encompassing campaigning and service elements, which can mean it takes outside organisations “a while to get up to speed”.

The RNIB also works with other sight-loss charities on research projects. In 2021, it collaborated with Guide Dogs and the Thomas Pocklington Trust to get a deeper understanding of the lived experience and emotional wellbeing of blind and partially sighted people. “All of us had tended to look at blind and partially sighted people through a demographic lens,” explains Ingleton. “We looked at age, severity and sight conditions, but we hadn’t dug into more underlying needs. We hadn’t formally recognised the impact of sight loss on people’s wellbeing until now – it was perhaps implicit, but less explicit.”

Altogether, the changes have made the charity’s insight department more central to its strategic vision. “Historically, we have been more reactive in our insights,” Ingleton says. “We would have an area we were campaigning about, and a lot of the research would be done to provide an evidence base to support that campaign. We have changed from that to be much more customer-centric as an organisation.”

Getting down to business

The RNIB has also undertaken a project alongside Sport England and British Blind Sport, ‘See Sport Differently’, to understand blind and partially sighted people’s participation in sports and the barriers they face.

The work included a literature review, a quantitative study with 400 people, two focus groups with 10 participants, and a secondary analysis of Sport England’s Active Lives survey, which has a sample of around 175,000 people across England. The Active Lives survey includes a question on visual impairment, which allows the RNIB to identify gaps in participation levels between blind and partially sighted people and the wider population.

As a result of the research, the RNIB has launched an awareness programme to try to encourage more blind and partially sighted people into sport. “There has been a lot of focus on the link between physical activity, having a healthy lifestyle, and mental wellbeing,” says Ingleton. “For an audience at risk of poor mental health, we have been thinking about what we can do to encourage greater levels of participation and getting people outdoors and active.”

Ingleton’s department measures the impact of the charity’s work, to identify areas for improvement and to help fundraising. Other research focuses on understanding supporters, an area in which the charity is looking to increase its operations in the years ahead. Business-to-business work is also on the radar, helping companies such as supermarkets and technology firms to implement the adjustments needed to make blind people’s lives easier.

One of the biggest recent projects was with Kellogg’s, to make cereal packaging more accessible. The research involved technology called a NaviLens, similar to a QR code, which is scanned at a greater distance to allow users to locate items and access information on product ingredients and allergies. Kellogg’s trialled the technology with 100 participants in 2020, using Coco Pops, and the RNIB is now discussing expanding the NaviLens project to other brands and products.

The Kellogg’s work followed a difficult two years for people with sight loss, as Covid-19, social distancing and avoiding touching rendered supermarket shopping difficult for blind people. “Many blind and partially sighted people had been happily doing online shopping for years, but they weren’t considered a vulnerable group when we hit the pandemic, and lost their supermarket slots,” says Ingleton. “It was not easy for them to go to the supermarkets – people were being encouraged to shop by themselves, and there wasn’t the assistance available.”

The charity had to examine the impact of the pandemic on its audience, so launched a ‘voice of the customer’ programme internally. This included social media listening on the RNIB’s Facebook pages and in forums run by regional groups affiliated with the charity. A small number of focus groups also took place every month to allow open conversations with beneficiaries about their experiences.

For a relatively small organisation, the breadth of work at the RNIB can be a challenge, and prioritisation is a necessity. “Ultimately we are trying to work out what impact we can make to people’s lives,” Ingleton concludes. “A lot of what we are grappling with is not easy.”