Ball and Minalba Brasil win award for braille-embossed can lids
Image: Ball Corporation
Ball Corporation and Minalba Brasil‘s braille-embossed aluminium can lid has been announced as the winner of Fast Company’s 2024 Innovation by Design Awards in the Latin America category.
The embossed can lid, the first on the Brazilian market, offers two options: water, or agua, and sparkling water, agua gas. Hugo Magalhães, global director of marketing at Ball, commented that there is a reason why these lids are the first of their kind on the Brazilian market. Braille is typically designed for flat surfaces and reading from left to right. Cans are circular, so there is not an obvious starting point.
The lid only offers a five-centimetre area for embossing, explained Magalhães. Working with such a limited area while maintaining braille readability and quality can be a challenge. “The size of the dot and the distance have to be readable,” he said. “We can easily emboss an image on a can, but braille is different.”
To combat this challenge, the team had to be very precise with both the distance between the braille cells and the size. Otherwise, the reader could interpret a different message than was intended. The team used both sides of the tab and printed left to right on the lid, following its curved shape.
While the undertaking was difficult, Camila Vila Verde, Ball’s regional marketing manager for South America, said it was rewarding. She told Fast Company she was recently on a run where they were handing out the braille-embossed cans, and she had the opportunity to speak with a woman who is blind. The blind woman answered that it was not only important but essential to have such a product on the market.
Being precise with the size of dots and distance between dots was crucial to relaying the correct message for readers. Ball worked with the Fundação Dorina Nowill para Cegos (the Dorina Nowill Foundation for the Blind), an expert organisation in Brazil, to ensure that the braille-embossed lid follows the standards for braille in terms of legibility.
