INSPIRATION / MOLLY BURKE
Consider the
person holding it.
A bottle. A book cover.
A decision to get the details right.
By Rob Urban
Two bottles can look entirely different in an advertisement and feel identical in the shower.
That small design failure is a useful place to begin with Molly Burke. It gets us away from the grand, flattering language often attached to disability and into the less glamorous business of whether someone can identify the conditioner.
In an Allure examination of beauty packaging, Burke discussed tactile distinctions, including Herbal Essences’ use of raised stripes for shampoo and circles for conditioner. The point was practical identification, including for people who do not read braille.
The bottle has no inspirational speech to deliver. It either gives the person holding it useful information or it does not.
Burke, a blind creator, author and consultant, has built a public career that makes this kind of ordinary encounter worth examining. Her work interests me because influence here can become something more precise than awareness. It can become a design question someone has to answer.
The customer
has already
arrived.
Beauty marketing can make an unfortunate assumption about blindness: that a person who cannot see a product in the expected way has little reason to want it.
That collapses a complicated human activity into looking in a mirror. Texture, scent, routine, personal expression and the pleasure of choosing do not belong exclusively to sighted people. A person also does not owe a company a philosophical explanation for wanting lipstick. Wanting the lipstick is sufficient.
Burke’s public work crosses fashion, beauty and disability advocacy. Her biography describes modeling and brand campaigns alongside writing and speaking, rather than presenting an interest in style as an eccentric exception to being blind.
The business implication is easy to miss. Sometimes a company does not need to invent demand. It needs to stop making participation unnecessarily difficult for people who already want what it sells.
Has the customer rejected the product, or has the product made the customer perform extra work merely to use it? A shopper who has to memorize the position of two identical bottles is solving a problem the packaging could have addressed.
A campaign can display a broad range of people while the object in their hands still assumes only one kind of user. Representation and usability are both worth pursuing. Neither can quietly substitute for the other.
Before the
first page.
Burke’s book UNSEEN makes an especially interesting object to examine because its subject and its manufacture meet.
Her account of the book’s design describes working with Abrams and disabled women on a cover incorporating braille, tactile elements and foil that relates to the light perception she retains. It also records choices about contrast, type, spacing and emphasis, along with print and audio editions and braille availability through the National Library Service for the Blind and Print Disabled.
Access entered the work while the team was deciding what the book would be. That timing matters: a cover can be redesigned, type can be changed and another format can be prepared while those choices are still open.
The cover is particularly revealing. Publishers use covers to establish tone, genre and desirability before a reader reaches a sentence. A tactile element lets that encounter include another way of perceiving. It is part of the invitation.
There is also an aesthetic argument here. Accessible does not have to mean stripped of personality. A useful object may still be pleasurable, distinctive and expressive. Reducing access to a checklist of tolerated compromises can produce something technically considered but emotionally unwelcoming.
I would want a book about belonging to be beautiful, too. The ambition should not end at allowing someone to endure it.
The jackets
went back.
That care was tested before publication.
In a public explanation of the delay, Burke said the sample jacket had worked, but the final printed jackets had braille that was almost flat. She and Abrams chose to have them reprinted. The release moved from September 23 to October 14, 2025.
I admire that decision. There was a finished object, a date and an audience waiting. The people responsible still made room for the reader whose experience would reveal the fault.
A promise about access becomes meaningful in moments like that. Someone needs the authority to say that the work is not ready, and a team needs to act on what that person knows.
Burke’s disappointment about the delay belongs in the story, too. She wanted the book out. Caring about the result meant accepting more time before people could hold it.
Expertise belongs
inside the work.
Burke’s consulting practice describes work on products, services, physical spaces and inclusive marketing. This is a different relationship from a company hiring a recognizable person to appear in an advertisement. Consulting can place the person’s judgment inside the work before the public sees the result.
The distinction matters because a testimonial usually arrives after the major decisions. A consultation can challenge the decisions themselves.
Different disabled users bring different needs and preferences. Bringing that experience into development gives a team more to investigate: which tasks cause difficulty, which changes help and what still needs testing with other users.
The bottle example also reminds us to recognize the people doing the development. Herbal Essences’ own accessibility account explains the raised markers and points readers to P&G accessibility leader Sam Latif. Burke’s public explanation helps an audience understand why that design work matters.
That is a useful relationship between advocacy and craft. A creator can make a detail legible to a wider public while giving the work itself our attention.
Businesses pay readily for expertise that reveals overlooked problems in logistics or finance. They should be able to recognize expertise that reveals overlooked problems for their customers without recasting the transaction as charity.
A life beyond
the explanation.
There is a cost to becoming someone whose daily life teaches an audience. People can start to assume that access to the content means access to the person.
In a 2025 interview about writing UNSEEN, Burke described the relief of telling previously private stories and the fear involved in releasing them. Even after years of public work, a new form asked something different of her.
That is worth respecting without trying to turn the discomfort into another inspirational credential. A creator can choose to disclose something. The audience has not earned the rest of her life as a bonus feature.
It is also possible to appreciate disability advocacy without demanding that every piece of content perform it. A disabled creator should be allowed interests that are joyful, frivolous, specific or simply none of our business. Otherwise, praise becomes another assignment: please keep helping us become better people every time you post.
Consideration becomes more demanding when it reaches into the thing being offered. It means hearing expertise early enough to change a decision and allowing the person providing it to have a life beyond educating everyone else.
The most useful outcome of watching someone explain a design problem may be a future customer who never has to think about that problem at all. She reaches for the right bottle, finishes getting ready and goes somewhere she wanted to go.
About Molly Burke
What does Molly Burke do?
Molly Burke is a blind author, content creator, speaker, model and accessibility consultant whose work includes fashion, beauty and disability representation.
When was UNSEEN released?
UNSEEN: How I Lost My Vision but Found My Voice was released by Abrams on October 14, 2025.
What accessibility features does UNSEEN include?
Burke’s account describes tactile braille and textures on the cover, high contrast, attention to type and spacing, and bold text in place of italics. The book is available in print and audio, with braille through the National Library Service for the Blind and Print Disabled.
Sources: Molly Burke’s official biography, book and consulting pages and her public account of the jacket reprint; Allure’s packaging coverage; Herbal Essences’ accessibility account; and Carly Tagen-Dye’s May 2025 PEOPLE interview. The Signal’s January 2026 Halifax reporting also documents the finished book’s design. Reflections on these choices are Rob Urban’s.
For more of Rob’s writing, perspective and consulting, meet Rob.