Off Madison Podcast: How Ads Are Still Getting Disability Representation Wrong

The number of disabled people worldwide is 15% of the population. And that number is expected to rise due to Covid.

Still, only 1% of advertising actually reflects disabled consumers, and even that little percentage is rife with problematic portrayals that still center on non-disabled viewers.

In Episode 4 of Off Madison, Adweek inclusion and creative editor Shannon Miller chats with Adweek Europe creative editor Brittaney Kiefer and Elea Chang, founder of the nonprofit accessibility conference Affect, about the state of disability inclusion in advertising.

Stream the episode below, listen and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, find it on Spotify or read the transcript.

Episode 4 Transcript

Shannon Miller: In my work, I deal with a lot of statistics and numbers that tell me what the latest trends are, what Gen Z is thinking, and even how many parents like to eat off of their children’s plates. Still, there is one particular statistic that I think about quite often: Disabled communities make up 15% of the Earth’s population, and that’s a number that’s expected to rise thanks to Covid. Still, only 1% of advertising actually reflects disabled consumers, and even that little percentage is rife with problematic portrayals at that still center around non-disabled viewers. So which change-makers are fighting the statistic and helping to increase the visibility of disabled life? I’m Shannon Miller. Grab a bag, a few snacks, and all of your favorite tunes. Let’s take a trip Off Madison.

Miller: I love comparing notes with Brittaney because she often has such powerful insights. She’s been following the state of disability and marketing from a European perspective for a while, but in the end, this is ultimately a global issue. So I invited you today because you wrote this really incredible article almost a year ago to the day, titled How Advertising Can Finally Get Real About Representing Disability. Can you tell us a little bit about what inspired you to write this?

Brittaney Kiefer: Yeah, so last year the Paralympics took place, postponed a year since the Covid pandemic, and concurrently the International Paralympic Committee launched a global campaign called “We The 15,” created by Adam & Eve DDB. And the campaign was all about highlighting the really striking fact that 15% of the global population has a disability. And I was just really surprised and struck by that figure. 15% is way bigger than I think most people would anticipate. And as Laura Roger, who was the global creative director at Adam & Eve, said at the time, she said, “That is too many to consider as abnormal or different, and too many to marginalize or ignore.” So that article was really about uncovering that fact and talking about if there is such a significant portion of the population who has a disability, why are advertisers not more aware of that, and why are they not adapting their communications to speak to that part of the community?

Miller: We know that there are very few ads that truly represent disabled communities. What was the biggest no-no that marketers were using during that time or what they’re continuing to use now I imagine?

Kiefer: I think it’s just tokenizing people who have a disability, which is the same challenge that marketers run into when they try to be more diverse and representative in their campaigns and in their communications. It’s treating people like they are other in some way, but 15% means that you probably work with someone who has a disability. You’ve definitely spoken to people who have a disability and may not even be aware of it, and our society is not built for that. It’s built for able-bodied people. Most marketers, I think because they think of people with disabilities as being more other, then they’re not speaking to them about anything other than the fact that they have a disability.

Miller: Were there any good examples at that time when you wrote the article of what disabilities should look like in advertising?

Kiefer: One example that I like that came out in 2021 as well was from the brand Virgin Media, which is a British brand. They’re a telecoms provider, and they did this ad about two young people who were gamers, and they met virtually in a game and kind of fell in love throughout the course of playing this game, and then eventually meet at the end. And the teenage boy in the ad is in a wheelchair, but that’s not really remarked upon, and that’s not the focal point of his story. He gets to have a story apart from the fact that he has to use a wheelchair, he gets to be a teenage boy like any other teenage boy in an ad or a film who is doing something fun and having an adventure and falling in love with someone.

Miller: I love that. We don’t have to use names, but what’s the worst example of disability that you’ve seen in advertising?

Kiefer: Well, sadly, I can think of a lot, but I think we’re moving to a place where we can show more whole pictures of people and it doesn’t have to focus on a point of difference because we all have differences, whether they’re visible or not. And I think in the past, a lot of advertisers and the creative industry generally represented people with disabilities as this kind of separate, misunderstood population that didn’t have things in common with everyone else and didn’t have jobs or highs or lows or, you know, annoyances or good days like anyone else that you would speak to.

Miller: I think one of the biggest controversies when it comes to disability and advertising tends to crop up every Super Bowl because we are so used to seeing the same inspiration porn that tends to feed Super Bowl marketers, and each time it feels like the disabled communities have to remind folks that like, this causes more harm than good. Why do you feel we keep falling in that trap of thinking that this is good storytelling, showing the disabled athlete overcoming their disability to win gold or to be this great athlete for everybody else?

Kiefer: Well, you’re actually touching on how the conversation around disability is changing, and in the U.K. the most famous example probably is the Superhumans campaign from Channel 4, which is the official broadcaster of the Paralympics. And they’re really famous for when they launched Superhumans about six years ago, it was that inspiration porn. It was Paralympic athletes who were achieving amazing feats. But if you look at their most recent campaign that came out last year, it was more focused on the human aspect of the superhuman.

And so we often have these two sides where either people with disabilities are seen as superhuman, like, look how amazing that they can achieve this. And perhaps brands like Channel 4 have perpetuated that, or the other side is seen as other. They’re weak either way. They’re not on an equal playing field in either. So we need to get into the middle and people need to understand that someone being elevated, a superhuman, that’s still not human.

I think maybe one parallel is, how would you feel if as women, if someone said you’re a female boss, you’re a female editor, and kind of celebrated you for the fact of being a woman. Like a lot of women have pushed back against that idea. I think there could be a parallel in how we talk about people who live with disabilities. Put them on an equal stage, an equal playing field. It’s not because they have this disability that we should be listening to what they have to say and giving them a platform in this world.

Miller: Like I said, it was a year since you’ve written this article, do you feel like the “We Are 15” campaign has had any material impact just yet or is it still stoking that conversation?

Kiefer: Sadly, I don’t think it’s had a huge impact, but when they launched a campaign, they did say this is the start of a long-term, 10-year effort. And with a lot of societal issues like this, it takes many years for people to understand something and then actually change it. So I’m looking forward to seeing how they progress a campaign, and hopefully, this won’t just be a conversation that happens around the Paralympics, but something that advertisers are aware of all the time and are pushing for, not just in the campaigns that they make but also the teams that work for them who are making their work behind the scenes, those need to be represented as well.

Miller: So I’m going to double back just a little bit ’cause I would like to talk a little bit about disabled creatives and where the state of that is.

Kiefer: I think that they’re very underrepresented because agencies generally aren’t built to be inclusive for people who are disabled. So I’ve heard of, for example, an art director who was visually impaired, who was working at an agency here in the U.K., I’ve heard of a few examples here and there. But the fact that I can just name those few examples really says it all, that it’s not a standard that in every room you go into, you’re aware that everyone is welcome there ever. That’s an inclusive space, and I just think a lot of the way that people get into the industry, the barriers that exist into letting people in at all are the same ones that prevent a lot of people who have disabilities from getting into those spaces.

Miller: If there’s one challenge that you could issue to marketers that really wanna make a concerted effort to reconcile our industry with today’s disabled communities, what challenge would you issue to them?

Kiefer: A lot of brands and advertisers talk about being inclusive, and you’re not being inclusive if you’re not considering the 15% of the global population who has a disability. And that’s something you need to consider, not just when you’re doing a campaign about disability or for that specific audience, but in everything that you do, because 15% is a huge number, and there are probably people on your team and in your audience who have disabilities that you don’t even know about or you can’t see. So I would say in everything that you do from the very start, Take that into consideration, and you’re probably not an expert, so speak to consultants who are experts in this space—disability consultants who are there to offer their services and help you think about how to be more inclusive as a business.

Miller: Talking to Brittaney about the nooks and crannies of the industries that we cover each day is always a bit of a thrill because she is so insightful. As a disabled person myself, a lot of this feels daunting and a little bit disheartening. It’s really exhausting to talk about the ways that our industry falls behind in disability inclusion, but if the ad industry is truly ready to represent all of its consumers, it’s something that they’re going to have to figure out real quickly.

According to recent studies, 1.2 million more people identified as having a disability than there were in 2020. And with Covid, that number is only going to skyrocket. So there really is not an option to ignore us anymore. We’re here. We are growing, and we deserve to have equity in this industry and to feel really truly represented. Luckily, there are change makers that are not only pushing for change, but providing resources that make representation and true inclusion so easy for marketers that are really looking to push the narrative forward. To meet them, we head way Off Madison and go out west to Portland, Oregon.

Elea Chang: Hi, I’m Elea Chang. My pronouns are they/them. I am the creator of a grassroots nonprofit called Affect, and I’m in Portland, Oregon.

Miller: So can you tell me a little bit about Portland? What is the general vibe there?

Chang: Portland’s an interesting eclectic mix of a city and town. The most glaring thing about it is that it is 71% white from the last census whose results I know. It’s been undergoing a lot of changes in the last 10 years, especially in the last two years of this pandemic. So there’s like a lot of big companies here and a lot of marketing presence like Nike and Wieden+Kennedy, but there’s also a lot of tidy marketing, like one- to two-person agencies. So that’s why I call it more of a city town. It hosts a multitude of orgs, businesses, people.

Miller: And can you tell me a little bit about how Affect came into fruition? What was the void that you were trying to fill with this organization?

Chang: Affect is a long, winding story. I guess starting from when I was young because my mom, my sister and I were kicked out of a women’s shelter at one point, and we were taken in by total strangers who gave us money and transportation so that we could travel to relatives. From that start, I just always had a desire to pay it forward and do good. And so from early on, I always knew that I wanted to work in the nonprofit space.

And then when I went into nonprofits and social good organizations, I started noticing all the problems. Just that the nonprofit industrial complex is very siloed and people are competitive for funding. There’s also problems with folks having savior complexes, and they like to come up with solutions for communities that they’re not a part of and didn’t bother to consult. And so Affect started as a part conference and part group volunteering event where I wanted to get people actually working within their communities to come talk about our work and share the unglamorous stories of what it’s like being a part of this community, doing all the things that don’t necessarily get press but actually make an impact in people’s daily lives.

I didn’t want it to just be like talking and patting ourselves on the back. So I built in the group volunteering part and I reached out to local Portland orgs to see who needed some help with a group of people just doing some of the basic unfun work that, again, gets no press, gets no attention, but just needs to be done. And so Affect was an annual conference for three years. We ended up doing a lot of fun projects. I say fun. I guess it was more fun for me, as the organizer, not the volunteer, but we helped orgs paint their bathrooms, sort office materials, send out postcards for charity events, things that other people would find a little bit tedious, but for me I just understand that there’s just a lot of grunt work and shit work that people call it, that needs to happen in order to make sure that your org has the capacity to actually help folks in need.

So it was a conference and during the time that Affect was a conference, I became more and more disabled and I just realized that it wasn’t sustainable to keep running Affect as an annual conference that took up all my time and energy, ’cause I had to go chase down sponsors. I had to go chase down amazing speakers. I can’t even believe some of the speakers we were able to get like Ijeoma Oluo before she totally blew up with So You Want to Talk About Race. We got a lot of amazing speakers that I’m so honored to have gotten their time and energy to come to my tiny little event, but it was just unsustainable for me. With my body changing and being less mobile, I got a mobility scooter. During the time that I was running Affect because my body was running into physical limitations, but I wanted to keep being able to leave my house and do things, and someone suggested to me, “Why don’t you look into a mobility scooter?” And while very expensive, if you can afford it, I would absolutely recommend it to people who feel like it could help them in their daily lives because that’s what enables me to actually continue leaving the house, interacting with people.

But because of all the things happening in my personal life, I was just like, “OK, I think I need Affect to be something different.” And so Affect just sort of naturally transitioned into an org that’s about creating resources more for arts advocacy and disability justice. A lot of the conference actually had been about focusing on accessibility and disability already. So it was very convenient that it seemed like a natural evolution, I guess, of the org in that way.

Miller: I remember the transition when Affect started, or like when it was like this. You say it was a little event and it wasn’t. It was so great and so big, it was like all of my friends were clamoring to be a part of this thing. So it was nice to see that when the circumstances started changing, you were able to transition it and you were still able to turn Affect into this really useful resource, and I love that it’s now consisting of bunch of different components like stock, photo and talent registry. Can you talk a little bit about some of like the different components of Affect?

Chang: Affect’s main project now is “Disabled and Here,” which is a series of stock images and interviews that celebrate the disabled in all of our individualistic glory. I don’t know if folks are gonna be familiar with the acronym BIPOC, so just in case anyone doesn’t know, it does stand for Black, Indigenous, People Of Color, but I definitely want this to be a declarative celebratory project, particularly featuring people who are disability advocates as Talila Lewis says: on the margins of margins.

So I wanted to definitely include disabled, queer and trans folks front and center. And when “Disabled and Here” started, I just wasn’t sure how many series we’d be able to do, so I was like, if we only get one chance, what is the most radical way I can make this stock image project impactful? Our first photo collection just featured all queer and trans folks in order to make use of the tiny little funding we got in the beginning. Definitely “Disabled and Here” is my proudest work. I think people would think it’s because of the impact, because DIS here has been adopted by disability rights states orgs, the ADA website itself and BBC News, but it’s my proudest work mainly because I have the privilege of getting to pay people to tell their stories, to be beautiful in photos and create beautiful illustrations.

And oftentimes people get to point to their work to land more [work]. And that’s the part that’s most important to me, is that it’s not just there as a feel-good PR project. It’s a project that actually gets people money in their pockets and gets them opportunities to do more things. ‘Cause ultimately, I want it to be a footnote in people’s stories, where they get to use it to do bigger and better. I’m paying them and treating them as professionals, and I ask everyone if they have thoughts on what kind of images they wanna create, because I don’t want it to ever just be me dictating like, “Oh, I want disabled and queer images to look like this.”

Everyone comes with their own story, their own background, and as much as they wanna be involved and in charge of helping shape that narrative, I want them to use this as an opportunity as much as they want. I mean, some people wanna be like, you know, “Please give me money and to tell me where to go,” and that’s totally fair, because I’m sure they’re busy dealing with like so many things. But other people are like, “Oh, I think I would like to shoot this kind of scene. I think I would like to illustrate this kind of scene.” And I’m like, “Yeah, go for it. I’m paying you to come and bring me all of you, as much as you’re comfortable with.” I mean, don’t bring all of you it. I don’t wanna violate any boundaries, OK? I wanna be very respectful of your comfort level, but as much as you wanna bring to the project, I want you to be open to using this as a platform.

I kind of hate using that word “platform” because I’m like sometimes when people say “we are a platform,” they really mean, “We are a place where we exploit you.” So I have reactions now when we’re a platform. I don’t know, a springboard. I just wanna help you go to wherever you wanna go along your journey. I wanna be a road stop in your journey, a very positive road stop.

I feel like marketers really need to understand that the disability community is not a monolith, and it’s also not just white elderly folks or young children. There are a lot of adults who are disabled, and they shouldn’t be afraid to use the word disabled. It’s a descriptor. Some people use it as political identity and they capitalize disabled, and that’s also very valid. But whatever you do, stop using euphemisms. I cannot stand the euphemisms where everybody dances around the word disability, like “handy capable ability.” Because what it does is it inadvertently actually draws more attention to what you can and can’t do instead of seeing a person as a person. Just call a spade a spade. We’re disabled.

It did pick up a negative connotation, but it doesn’t have to keep it. So I don’t want them to be afraid of actually mentioning the community. I think that I’m a little tired of agencies and marketers just co-designing or co-collaborating with disabled creators. And I would like to see funding move directly to the disabled creators. Why not just give people money directly to do the things they’ve already been doing and to lead in the communities that they’re already living in and experts in both in their personal and professional life? I just don’t know why brands feel like they need to have such strong ownership of a project. If you truly hope to reach people, you have to have people with an understanding of said marginalized community, which is most often a member of said marginalized community. So just give the people the money directly.

I’m really hoping that in, like, 10 years, “Disabled And Here” will just be really dated and boring and will move into not only representation that’s far more than I could imagine today, but I would like the whole representation conversation itself to be dated and boring. Because representation is just a very important part of diversity and inclusion, but representation itself doesn’t get you anywhere. If the people in power are not actually the marginalized community itself.

Miller: I love that. I would like for this to be irrelevant in 10 years. I would like for this to not be a conversation that we are still having, which is a great indication of how tired we are. Like we would just like to not be talking about this 10 years from now.

Chang: I mean, these days I’m just in my mid- to late 30s, depending on how you count the numbers, you know? And I just remember being a teenager and thinking it’s so old to be in your 30s. And now we’re in our 30s and for people to say anything I’m doing is innovative and fresh feels like a little bit, is it though or is it that the industry is moving too slow? Shouldn’t I be behind the times? Shouldn’t I be following the youth?

I do wanna be irrelevant. I look forward to that. I always wanna keep learning and growing. I do wanna be a little bit crotchety, but I don’t wanna be so crotchety that I become like the main villain. But it’s OK if I become less relevant. People are always afraid of not being front and center, but I’m like, “it’s OK because it would indicate that we’ve made some progress.” Like Star Trek and comics have been so political from the start, and even today we say that they’re very progressive, and I don’t want that for “Disabled And Here.” I don’t want in 10 years for them to be like, “Wow, ‘Disabled and Here’ is still such a cool project. They should be like, ‘I guess it was good for its time.’ You know, that would be the real standard of whether or not we progressed as a society.

Miller: A huge thank you to Brittaney Kiefer and Elea Chang for joining me today. And thank you, fellow traveler, for listening to Off Madison, part of the Adweek Podcast Network and Acast creator network. This podcast was produced by Al Mannarino, executive produced by Chris Ariens and John Heil, and edited by Divergent Productions. You can listen and subscribe to all Adweek podcast by visiting adweek.com/podcasts. Stay updated on all things Adweek podcast network by following us on Twitter @adweekpodcasts, and if you have any suggestions or questions for the show, please send them to us podcast@adweek.com. I’m Shannon Miller. Until next time.

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