A bank turns Ramadan's calendar into Braille moon bracelets for the blind — 'Blind Faith'

Ramadan revolves around seeing: the month begins when the moon is sighted, and every household tracks the days and fasting hours on the printed Imsakiyeh calendar. For the visually impaired, that everyday object is unusable — a ritual built on sight leaves them out of the spiritual journey everyone else shares. Bank Al Etihad and VML Jordan set out to fix the object itself.

Their answer, 'Blind Faith', reimagined the Imsakiyeh as 30 wearable bracelets, one for each day of Ramadan. Each bracelet carries an embossed representation of that night's moon phase — the current day marked by an enlarged moon — plus sunrise, sunset and fasting times in Arabic Braille. The design was inspired by wristwatches, made adjustable so it can be put on without help, and repeatedly refined with blind users until it was intuitive enough to wear independently.

For Ramadan 2025, the campaign evolved from a personal tool into a shared ritual: a tactile family booklet with lunar phases, iftar and suhoor times, and Arabic text for sighted family members, distributed through schools and centers for the blind across Jordan in the first week of the month. Recipients described feeling 'truly seen and included' for the first time, and the bank's CMO framed the work as part of a wider accessibility agenda that includes accessible ATMs and branches.

The design consequences were immediate and measurable: the campaign earned Jordan its first D&AD Pencil, then took the Grand Prix for Design plus a Gold Lynx at the 2025 Dubai Lynx awards. People who had lost their sight said the bracelet reconnected them to a tradition they believed was lost; those born blind encountered the moon's shape for the first time. A Ramadan calendar designed for touch, not sight, turned an overlooked community into the campaign's most powerful audience.