The archive · Design & Visual · Marketing decision · 2024
StopGap's Inaccessible Font makes Toronto shops feel the barrier of one step
StopGap sends Toronto shop owners a letter set in a deliberately frustrating font, making able-bodied readers feel the barrier a single step creates.
StopGap Foundation · Mekanism Canada
What it had to solve
For people with disabilities, stairs can present a serious challenge, yet most people cannot understand the significance a single step can hold. StopGap Foundation, which works on accessibility for businesses with single-step entries, needed Toronto business owners to feel that barrier before it could ask them to remove it.
How it works
For people with disabilities, stairs can present a serious challenge; for most others, a single step is invisible. StopGap Foundation builds accessibility for businesses with single-step entries, and it needed Toronto business owners to understand the significance one step can hold.
Mekanism Canada created The Inaccessible Font, a typeface designed to slow readers down and generate frustration as they tried to read. StopGap mailed physical letters set in the font to Toronto businesses with single-step entries; because the letter was hard to read, a QR code directed recipients to a website where they could remove the barrier and read the letter in a normal font.
The medium performed the argument: the message could not be received until the reader removed the barrier it described. D&AD keeps the work in its awards archive, listed among Art Direction winners and crediting Mekanism Canada for client StopGap Foundation.
Why it lands
- An unreadable letter makes an invisible problem tangible: business owners experience frustration instead of being told that stairs exclude people.
- Sending the font to businesses that actually have single-step entries aims the lesson at the people with the power to change them.
- The QR escape route acts out the solution — a barrier that can be removed — so the format itself argues for the ramp.
- Because the message only arrives after the barrier is lifted, every recipient enacts the campaign's core idea once.
What it did
The medium acted out the message: recipients had to remove the font barrier — through the QR website — before they could receive the plea at all. D&AD keeps the work in its awards archive, listed among Art Direction winners, crediting Mekanism Canada for StopGap Foundation.
What you can take
Make the audience perform the problem before you explain it: a deliberately inaccessible letter lets able-bodied readers feel the barrier, then shows the fix through the act of removing it.
Since then
The campaign is preserved in the D&AD awards archive, which credits Mekanism Canada as entrant, advertising agency, design agency and production company for client StopGap Foundation, and lists the work among Art Direction winners. The page records no reach, ramp or fundraising figures, so the case stands on the mechanism: a font that makes the able-bodied reader feel a barrier, and a QR code that lets them remove it.
Sources
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