Disability in Advertising: Is Representation Finally Improving?
2022 was an important year for disability representation in advertising.
A number of global megabrands —including Apple and Amazon– launched ads which featured disabled people in leading roles. Of course, this shouldn’t really be news —and I hope that before long, a sentence like my last will be too banal to write–– but the reality is that disability is still woefully underrepresented in advertising. A recent Channel 4 study found that in the UK, only 4% of people represented in ads are disabled, and only 1% of those are in lead roles.
The Greatest, Apple (2022). Image Description: a young Black woman applies glittery eyeliner by holding a paintbrush between her toes.
In my previous post, Disability in Advertising: The Six Most Disruptive Ads, I explored some of the most effective ads featuring disability from the last few years. Several of these ads centred on the Paralympics and on the sporting excellence of a few exceptional disabled people; others were self-consciously trying to undo decades of harmful stereotypes. But regardless of what they were trying to promote, all six ads suggested that disability representation in advertising was at last becoming provocative and political – and after decades of erasure and misrepresentation, we were hardly going to complain.
But then, in 2022, I saw something shift: the ads that featured disabled people seemed again to be changing…
Is Disabled Advertising Representation Improving?
The first noticeable shift in representation was that last year, disability ads had less of a focus on sport. Of course, 2022 wasn’t a Paralympics year, so this was somewhat inevitable. But I don’t think it explains everything.
Instead, it may be that because 2022 wasn’t a Paralympics year, advertisers couldn’t fall back on the tired tropes which usually accompany disabled people in media: that those of us worthy of your screen-time are all extraordinary sportsmen, perpetually overcoming our own bodies and defying expectations at every turn.
According to Channel 4’s 2022 Mirror on the Industry – a research project which annually tracks representation in TV advertising – 13% of disabled characters are muscular or athletic, compared to just 5% of characters overall. Disabled characters are also 5x more likely to be a well-known sportsperson.
Super. Human. Channel 4 (2020). Image Description: A group of disabled Paralympians gaze triumphantly at the camera.
And by now, we’re tired of it. By now, we’ve all seen disabled people sweating, lifting weights, and ploughing through swimming pools. We’ve seen the rousing TV ads like Channel 4’s Super. Human. and we’ve seen the glossy Netflix docs like Rising Phoenix. Audiences are no longer surprised by depictions of disabled people doing sport – disability representation has moved beyond the trope of the ‘superhero’.
So instead, advertisers have had to get creative. They’ve had to take a hard look at the culture, decide what sorts of disability representation are rife and which are lacking, and consider which ideas about disabled people need amplifying or unravelling. The ad world has had to throw out the old, and do something new. Hallelujah!
OK, So How Are Disability Ads Changing?
Well, is it just me, or is there finally beginning to be less of the twinkly music? Less tugging on our heartstrings, and less “inspiration porn”? Is it just me, or are we beginning to see something of a trend?
In 2022, disability ads seemed at last to be focusing on the ‘everyday’: disabled people living their normal lives and going about their daily routine. Which, for most of us, involves less world records or gold medals and more unloading the washing machine or hanging our pants to dry.
Sign with Fingers, Cadbury Dairy Milk Fingers (2022). Image Description: A teenage girl signs in BSL. She is standing in her kitchen with a joyful expression on her face.
Below, I summarise some of the recent trends in disability representation in advertising. From everyday depictions of disability visibility to campaigns with embedded captions and audio description, here are a few of the recent trends which give me hope for the future of disability in advertising.
Disabled Characters are Living Ordinary Lives
From Apple’s The Greatest to Cadbury’s Sign Something Big and Small and Amazon’s Accessibility Anthem, there has recently been a trend for ads showing disabled people in ‘everyday’ situations. Interestingly, in the brief for Channel 4’s 2022 Diversity in Advertising Award (which last year focused on disability representation), the judges even called explicitly for ‘more everyday ads that aren’t all about the condition or impairment.’
Across Apple, Cadbury and Amazon’s recent ads, disabled people are represented as neither objects of pity or superheroes – and there’s not a Paralympian to be seen!
At last, disabled people are being portrayed as just like you. They’re our kids and our colleagues, our classmates and our siblings. They’re not only wheelchair-users, but all sorts of other disabled people too: people who are blind or Deaf, people with Down’s Syndrome or amputees. And they aren’t on their own anymore: they’re shown to be part of something bigger; a global disability community; an identity.
We live in an ableist world, so the importance of disability representation in these ‘everyday’ ads cannot be understated: they send a message, loud and clear, that all disabled people are valuable. That our humanity does not depend on extraordinary or Paralympic achievement. That we’re inherently worthy and an essential part of humanity – past, present and future.
Advertising is finally beginning to reflect that.
2. Advertising is Understanding the Social Model
Disability ads also seem to be slowly getting the hang of the social model of disability. For the unitiated (welcome!), the social model is the idea that people are disabled by society, not their bodies.
The social model isn’t just a nice idea: it has endless, real-life implications for how disabled people are perceived and treated in society.
Because once you understand that disabled people’s bodies are not the problem, then the responsibility no longer falls on the disabled individual: it’s on the rest of us! It’s not up to disabled people to fix their impairment or ‘get better’: it’s up to society to make the environment accessible, or to be more thoughtful in attitude, or to provide reasonable adjustments.
For example, the social model insists that a wheelchair-user’s access to a building shouldn’t be dependent on that person’s ability to get out of their chair and climb the stairs. Instead, their access to a building depends on our putting in a lift or ramp or some alternative step-free entrance.
In disabled circles, these ideas are hardly radical, but in wider society they’re still too often misunderstood.
So it’s exciting to see Apple, Amazon and Cadbury bring the concept of accessibility into the mainstream. Apple and Amazon show that with the help of assistive tech, disabled people can now more than ever live rich, interesting and meaningful lives. Meanwhile, Cadbury’s Sign Something Big and Small leads with the headline, “Most hearing people don’t know how to include a deaf person in everyday conversation.” The ad makes it clear that Deaf people don’t need to hear: the rest of us need to learn sign language!
None of these ads alludes explicitly to the social model (I suppose that wouldn’t be very sexy), but they certainly put the idea into action: that given the right tools, there is nothing that disabled people can’t do. The ads offer a slice of life in authentic representation: disabled people going about their everyday routine, watching TV, hanging out with family, going to school, or rummaging about in the fridge. And we really must need more storylines, because frankly, I’m starving to see it…
3. Advertising is Embracing Accessibility
It’s been great to see advertising campaigns that feature disability more consistently providing captions and audio description. Both Apple’s The Greatest and Amazon’s Accessibility Anthem provide not only captions, but alternative versions of the ad with audio description (AD).
If you have yet to watch an ad with audio description, try it! Quite often it adds an interesting extra layer of information or storytelling. On which note – I hope to soon see more ads consider accessibility not as an add-on or afterthought, but as an opportunity to innovate and create something truly original.
Because when embedded early into a creative process, captions, audio description or any other accessible feature, can turn an average ad into something really quite memorable or inventive.
giffgaff did this successfully with their 2021 ad which features Aleks, a BSL (British Sign Language)-using avatar who explains giffgaff’s benefits simultaneously alongside text bubbles in written English. It’s a very simple concept, but the novelty of using BSL instead of English makes the ad – and the brand – stand out. Yay, inclusion!
What’s Next for Disability Inclusion in Advertising?
There’s no doubt that the quality and complexity of disability representation in advertising seems slowly to be improving. But make no mistake: disability ads are still too few and far between. Still only 4% of people featured in ads are disabled; advertising is a long way off from accurately reflecting that 22% of our population is disabled.
Clearly, brands still feel a lot of fear about how to tackle the topic of disability – and too often the fear of “saying the wrong thing” prevents them from saying anything at all.
But if a whole 18% of the population is still not being represented, shouldn’t we be asking: what are their stories? And who are we hiding?
Below, I have summarised the trends I would most like to see next in disability representation in advertising.
Representing Invisible Disability
Disabled representation is still too often conflated with visible disability: a wheelchair-user; a blind person with a cane; a Deaf person with a hearing aid or cochlear implant.
And I get it: visible disability is easier to represent! TV or print advertising is a visual medium, and certain disabilities, assistive tech or mobility aids are more immediately obvious. TV and print ads need to be short and snappy, so visible disability better lends itself to short-form storytelling: it doesn’t need as much exposition.
Visible disability can also more easily be incidental. Say, for instance, you’re advertising a dating app, and there’s a scene where a couple are having a candlelit dinner… Well, you could easily cast one of the couple as a wheelchair-user without it fundamentally changing the story.
Whereas suddenly mentioning that one of the couple has Crohn’s disease would probably demand some extra script and screentime.
And yet, according to recent stats, only 8% of disabled people use a wheelchair and 80% of disabled people have a non-visible disability. Which means there’s a whole spectrum of invisible disabilities which have yet to receive any screen-time – and millions of people whose stories have yet to be told.
Invisible disabilities are certainly harder to weave into a succinct narrative. But at the same time, invisible disability offers a lot of creative potential: isn’t there something inherently dramatic in the tension between what someone looks like, and what’s going on underneath?
There aren’t a ton of effective examples of invisible disability in advertising, but a successful campaign by Lloyds Bank stands out. In 2018, their ad campaign Get the Inside Out won Channel 4’s Diversity in Advertising award, and received a ton of press coverage, engagement on social media, and a 256% traffic increase to the Mental Health UK website.
2. Getting to Grips with Intersectionality
In the past, disabled people in the media were almost unanimously white and male. Thankfully this seems slowly to be changing – especially when it comes to the representation of race or gender. For example, 2021’s #WeThe15 campaign was a brilliant showcase of the intersectionality within the disabled community.
And yet too often, there is still this idea in the media that if someone is disabled, that’s ticking one box, already! So it’s rare to see characters whose disabled identity intersects with a different part of their identity.
Not only does this mean that our advertising does not reflect the whole richness of humanity, but it’s patronising: it implies that if a character were, say, Pakistani and Deaf, or blind and trans, audiences couldn’t cope. Like it would be too much for our little heads to handle!
But I have a theory as to where this might be coming from.
When using advertising to represent groups that are already marginalised, there might well be a feeling that it would be counterproductive to try to cover too many bases at once; that perhaps it would dilute the "message”. For example, an agency exec might think, “If our young female character is already a wheelchair-user, we can hardly make her gay, too! How many gay disabled people are there? Won’t people accuse us of woke-washing?”
To which I’d say, let them! Because studies show consistently that people of colour and the LGBTQ+ community are much more likely than their white or straight counterparts to be disabled.
So what are we waiting for? Let’s show humanity in all its beautiful, messy, intersecting glory – not because we want to tick more boxes but because actually, that’s who we are.
3. Hiring Disabled Talent Behind the Camera
Of course we all want to see more disabled characters, played by more disabled actors. But for any good storytelling to be authentic, we also need the talent behind the camera to deeply understand the topic.
So it’s about time we saw more disabled talent within creative teams.
More disabled directors and producers. More disabled copywriters and art directors. And more disabled people in the upper echelons of creative agencies.
Cadbury’s recent ad campaign for their Dairy Milk Fingers was a great example of a brand representing Deafness – and doing the work to make sure that their ad was authentic and effective. It’s obvious that the ad team didn’t just come up with a quick script by the water-cooler: they partnered with UK charity National Deaf Children’s Society, and also worked closely with Deaf writer and consultant Rebecca A Withey. The result is striking in its quietness, and loud in its goal of encouraging more people to learn British Sign Language.
4. More Disabled Characters in Lead Roles
With only 1% of lead roles going to disabled characters, it goes without saying that ad teams need to write more complex and interesting stories which centre disabled people. But that’s not to say that those ads have to be disability stories: disability could equally well be incidental to the plot.
To be honest, I’m especially keen to see disabled characters in lead roles when the ad itself isn’t about disability or accessibility (ie. it’s not trying to sell us the latest assistive tech or mobility aid).
Take for example Virgin Media’s 2021 ad Faster Brings Us Closer. It wasn’t an ad for a speedy new powerchair: it was an ad for Virgin Media’s fastest new WiFi. But it just so happened that one of the lead characters was a wheelchair-user. I don’t know if the character was written as a wheelchair-user, or if he became one as a result of blind casting. Either way, the character’s disability is completely irrelevant to the plot of the story, which is about two twenty-something gamers falling in love. And that might be why the ad is so important.
Because how often do we get to watch a rom-com where the lead happens to use a wheelchair?
5. Representing Disability Pride and Joy
None of this is to say that every ad featuring disability needs to say something original or overtly political. In fact, I wonder if we might only reach a culture of truly authentic disabled representation when the ads that we watch don’t all feel like activism – they’ll no longer need to.
So what I really want to see onscreen is more pride. More joy. More disabled people having… dare I say… a good time? Is that too much to ask?
One example of disabled joy in advertising was Microsoft’s 2019 ad We All Win, which famously played during the Superbowl. It features a group of kids with different disabilities and limb differences using Microsoft’s new adaptive controller. For the most part, it features Owen, a nine-and-a-half year old with a rare syndrome which means he uses a wheelchair. We see him playing video games with his friends, shouting and laughing and having fun.
(Yeah, alright, so the ad does feature the “twinkly music” that I’ve already professed to hate. But I think I’ll let this one off because it is, after all, an ad about kids! I’m not sure that the teary dad is helpful to the cause either, but the ad did come out in 2019 – and in those four years, representation has come a long way.)
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So after much analysis of the good, bad, and ugly of disabled representation in advertising, I seem to be ending with the same ad I started with: Apple’s The Greatest. Clearly, the ad is one of the best examples of disabled representation in advertising to date. It’s about joy, passion and connection, and it features disabled people —quite simply– doing the things they love.
We watch a music producer jamming to a beat, his ventilator humming behind him. We watch a blind and very dapper musician playing piano. We watch a girl with Down’s Syndrome walking down her school hallway, to high-fives from her friends. We watch a woman apply eyeshadow, using her impeccably manicured toes to hold the make-up brush. And by saying very little explicitly, the ad speaks a lot.
So for just a second, I would urge anyone representing disability in advertising to forget the politics; the knottiness of language; the How do we get this ad to END ABLEISM? Let’s take a deep breath…
What I most want to see in advertising, is more disabled people having fun – which, in the world we live in, might be as radical as representation can be.
If you’re looking for a writer, copywriter or creative consultant who can help you authentically communicate disability, get in touch with me at hello@justcopy.co.uk or via the form on my Contact page.