Fresh Campaigns Urge Ad Creatives To Portray Disability Realistically

When it comes to depicting disability in marketing and advertising materials, brand creatives are often left with a sizeable headache.

In advertising imagery, when disability is shown, it needs to be apparent without being so overstated that brands and creatives are left open to accusations of exploitation, insensitivity or boorish ignorance.

Faced with this thorny conundrum, marketers have traditionally responded in one of two ways. The first is to only opt for stale one-dimensional images such as someone in a wheelchair despite wheelchair users representing just 10% of the disability community. The second response, likely borne out of both a fear of getting it wrong and insufficient disability representation within the creative industry itself, is to simply avoid showing disability at all. In this context, it is perhaps unsurprising that in 2021 only 1% of primetime U.S. TV ads featured disability-related themes or visuals.

Out of sight, out of mind

One organization with a razor-sharp focus on increasing levels of disability confidence amongst brand creatives is U.K.-based Business Disability Forum which has published guidelines on the responsible use of disability-related imagery as part of its Changing the image of disability” campaign.

Accompanying the guidelines, which deal with everything from authentically casting models and volunteers with disabilities in campaigns to highlighting less apparent disabilities such as neurodiversity and mental health through the sensitive use of captions and alt text, is a bank of 480 free images for BDF members created using disabled people as models and advisors.

These guidelines are additionally contextualized by recently announced survey data from Ipsos which identified that 32% of respondents from a sample size of 6,500 adults aged 16-75 from across the UK reported not seeing any disability represented in content they had seen, watched or read over the past 6 months. When it was seen, images of wheelchair and mobility scooter users were signaled by 26% of respondents as the most common means of depicting disability – with conditions such as facial differences, skin conditions, muscular-skeletal problems, energy-limiting conditions and dexterity issues being conspicuous by their absence. Meanwhile, only 23% of disabled respondents surveyed felt that images of disabled people used in content they had seen, watched or read, reflected their own experience of disability.

The cost to the marketing industry of continuing to get this wrong could hardly be higher. According to a 2020 report from the World Federation of Advertisers, standing at some $13 trillion, the addressable disabled market for products and services is larger than that of China. To boot, research from Getty Images and Verizon Media published in 2019 suggested that the public at large is more positive towards brands that include disabled people in their advertising.

Commenting on BDF’s campaign, which has backing from community luminaries such as Paralympian Kadeena Cox OBE, trainer, consultant and journalist Simon Minty and actress Cerrie Burnell, Sinéad Burke CEO of accessibility consultancy Tilting the Lens and advocate of inclusion within the fashion industry said, “For too long, images of Disabled people have been clinical, and without reflection of community or disability pride. Stock imagery can reiterate exclusionary narratives, making Disabled people objects rather than subjects or protagonists. Visibility alone cannot be a metric for systemic change, but this campaign and its library of images for businesses and media is a key milestone.”

Lara Davis, Business Disability Forum’s Head of Communications added, “Our view of the world is influenced by the images we see in media and advertising. Too often, disabled people are either missing from that content or are represented in an unrealistic way, reinforcing unhelpful stereotypes and leaving disabled people feeling overlooked and misunderstood.

“Through our ‘Changing image of disability’ campaign, we are showing the diversity of real disabled people to help increase understanding around disability – particularly less-visible conditions, which have a huge impact on people’s daily lives but can be difficult to portray visually and often go unseen. We hope the images and guidance we have created will challenge everyone to think differently and will help businesses and the media to create a more authentic and rounded view of disability.”

Collective responsibility

The timing of BDF’s campaign is certainly auspicious. Last month, over in the United States, a grassroots movement amongst creative agencies aimed at turbocharging disability inclusion in advertising began to take shape.

Spearheaded by Misfit Media, a boutique agency of disabled creatives specializing in educating brands as well as the wider industry about disability inclusion, the Misfit 100 recently announced its avowed aim of doubling disability representation in advertising by 2025. The first step on this journey is to build a collective of 100 creative teams and agencies who are willing to make a tangible commitment to this end by July of this year. The following six months will see an intensive disability education program focusing on topics like disability history, the different models of disability such as the social model versus the medical model and disability inclusive language and bias.

After that, it’s time to get creative with an end goal of having all participating agencies put up a disability-inclusive ad on Times Square on December 3 2025 which marks the International Day of Persons with Disabilities. The collective further intends to curate all this content and make it into a searchable reference database as a means of inspiring future efforts towards better disability representation across the industry

Misfit Media’s founder and CEO Kelsey Lindell acknowledges that, even if the campaign meets its goals, this will only increase disability representation in advertising to 2% but maintains that this would be a great start.

“We want to go from 1% to 2%,” says Lindell. “We know that 2% is still far from adequate but when was the last time any industry doubled something in just two years? It’s probably been quite a while so we think that’s a very positive healthy challenge.”

Lindell, whose agency has worked with the likes of Nike, NBCUniversal and VLMY&R, is also of the firm belief that advertising creatives want to get disability representation right but often lack the tools and confidence to make it happen.

“We’ve always considered ourselves an agency for agencies,” she explains.

“We’re certain creatives never want to do harm. It’s one of our core beliefs as a company that they want to do good. Creative professionals are some of the most kind-hearted, well-meaning, incredible people that I’ve met and they just don’t know what they don’t know so we want to help them.”

If indeed it is a fear of getting it wrong that causes some brands and agencies to shrink away from disability representation then surely confidence building and education is the key to unlocking that particular door? For others, who may find it difficult to avert their gaze from anything but the bottom line, if such teaching can also include highlighting that China-sized hole in their targeting plans and revenue calculations – then all the better.