The flat-pack furniture giant may be best known for its maze-like store layouts, but IKEA Finland is piloting two services at its Vantaa location that are designed to make those same environments more accessible for customers who are blind or have low vision.
The first service lets customers pre-book a 90-minute accompanied shopping visit with a trained staff member. The second uses the NaviLens app, which reads coded markers placed around the store and delivers audio directions about department locations and product areas in over 30 languages.
Both services are free.
“We want as many people as possible to experience shopping at IKEA as smoothly as possible, based on their own needs,” says Catharina Van Den Houwe, Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Leader, IKEA Finland. “We know that for everyone the store environment is not automatically an easy environment, and that is why we want to develop concrete solutions to support everyday life.”
The pilot reflects what the company has been building toward since 2021, when it established its Digital Inclusive Design, Equity and Accessibility Centre of Expertise, which sets guidelines and tools for accessible digital product development.
Globally, about 1.3 billion people (one in six) live with a significant disability, according to the World Health Organization.
“As expectations around accessibility evolve, the focus is shifting towards creating experiences that are not only functional, but intuitive and inclusive by design,” says Paulina Bergman, Acting Design and Accessibility Manager at IKEA.
Van Den Houwe is clear this is a learning exercise, not a rollout. The Vantaa store is a testing ground, and whether the services expand to other locations will depend on what the company hears from customers using them. That said, the underlying infrastructure, the design systems, accessibility standards, staff training, is already being built into how IKEA develops its digital products at scale.
The retailer is also investing in an automated crawler that will improve company-wide accessibility checks. There is currently a self-assessment guide, but this new tool will add consistency and make sure checks are more thorough.
“Accessibility isn’t just about standards, it’s about making everyone feel welcome,” says IKEA Retail (Ingka Group) CDO Parag Parekh. As IKEA advances digitally, it embraces the responsibility to create seamless, inclusive experiences for many.”
For retail tech leaders watching this space, this pilot is a useful reminder that accessibility infrastructure isn’t a feature add-on. It’s a design decision that either gets built in from the start or gets retrofitted later at much higher cost.
Final Shots
- IKEA’s NaviLens integration provides audio-described store navigation in over 30 languages, extending the tool’s utility beyond disability access to language barriers.
- The pilot is deliberately scoped to one market as a learning phase, with scaling decisions dependent on customer feedback.
- IKEA’s Digital IDEA Centre of Expertise has embedded accessibility into its Skapa design system by default, meaning the policy infrastructure behind pilots like this one already exists company-wide.
