Shaun on why we need Bigger, Better, Labels

I am very independent, and I can take medication on my own.

One day, I had a bad feeling about taking another medicine or taking too much medication 💊. Because the information on the label was too small, I could not see it clearly and thought I needed to take three tablets, but it was only two tablets, and I had panicked about it.

Because of this experience, I had an idea 💡to make information accessible on medication labels for everyone, including people with a learning disability. If you cannot read how much medication you need to take on the label because the text is too small, it could take your independence and power away.

I took my idea to my manager at St Mary’s Hospital, Leeds, and she found my ‘Bigger Better Labels’ idea very interesting because I had a lived experience of having an overdose.

I told my manager how bad it was to have an overdose and lose my independence. I needed to get support from my mother and my support worker, and it took me a while to get my independence back.

Mystery shopping at local chemists

I decided to go mystery shopping on my days off and visited four chemists in Rotherham.

I went to Superdrug, Boots, and an independent chemist and asked them: “Can you make information on your medication bigger and more accessible on the medication labels?” and they all said: “Yes, we can.”

But you need to ask, and not everyone is confident enough to ask for support.

I said if there were posters in your chemists, people would have the confidence to ask for support to make their medication labels bigger and more accessible for all types of people who need more accessible information.

Then I went to another chemist close to where I live, the worker said: “It’s not my job to do that, you could use a magnifying glass”. I was annoyed with that comment and said: “It would be on your head if there were many other overdoses”. Then I walked angrily out of the chemist.

What everyone thinks about accessible labels

I did some research about making information accessible on medication labels and talked to a lot of different people with learning disability, people who do not have a learning disability, autistic people, old, young, family members, strangers and everybody else.

Here’s what a lot of people told me:

• Information on all types of medication labels needs to be bigger and more accessible.

• It's very difficult to read the information on medication labels

• Small text on labels could be dangerous, and could take people#s independence and power away

• Chemists should make information bigger and more accessible on all types of labels.

I took all these ideas back to work, and in a few months’ time, the project was called ‘Bigger Better Labels’ and I'm very proud of it. Here’s a video that I made for St Mary’s Hospital about it:

Making 'Bigger Better Labels’ happen

Because of my overdose, I still want to make this project happen so that everyone has bigger, more accessible information on their medication labels 🏷️, I believe it is a human right,

We are still looking for funding for this project - If you are interested in supporting Bigger Better Labels please get in touch.