Why we chose Guide Dogs

Print is, at its heart, a people business. It exists to connect, to communicate clearly, and to build trust. When it’s done well, print and direct mail are meant to be seen, handled and kept — tangible experiences that not everyone can easily access.

With that understanding, we’ve chosen Guide Dogs as the charity we’ll be supporting in 2026. Their work is practical, consistent and genuinely life-changing, built around trusted partnerships that help people with sight loss live more independently. Reliability, care and long-term commitment sit at the centre of what they do — values we recognise, respect, and aim to reflect in the way we work with our own customers.

Guide Dogs: a few facts

• Every day, around 250 people in the UK begin to lose their sight.
• More than 2 million people in the UK are living with sight loss that significantly affects their daily lives. This is projected to reach 2.8 million by 2035. Sight loss is permanet for more than half of those affected.
• ‘Sight loss’ includes a range of vision impairment that affects independence, mobility, employment, and quality of life, even when some usable vision remains.
• Long-term, irreversible sight loss can be caused by conditions such as macular degeneration, glaucoma or diabetic eye disease.
• In the UK the total number of assistance dogs, of which guide dogs are the most widely recognised, is only 7,000. 

Training a guide dog is a careful, staged process that takes time. Puppies begin with volunteer raisers, where they spend their first 14–18 months learning everyday behaviour and basic obedience. Once mature, they move into formal guide dog training, which typically lasts around six months. This structured programme prepares them for real-world environments before they’re matched with a person with sight loss. The final stage is joint training, where dog and owner learn to work together as a confident, reliable partnership.

* Guide Dogs is the working name for the Guide Dogs for the Blind Association, registered charity in England and Wales No. 209617, and in Scotland No. SC038979.

Sources:
RNIB, “Key Information and Statistics on Sight Loss in the UK”
The Association of British Dispensing Opticians (ABDO)