Despite making up over 15% of the global population, people with disabilities are hugely underrepresented across all media, communications, and consumer touchpoints – from advertisements to packaging.

We know that creating disability-inclusive and accessible places, products, and communications drives greater social inclusion and access to untapped markets. There is a clear opportunity for brands to see both social and economic returns by championing authentic and inclusive disability representation. But progress can only be made when disabled people play a central role in business decisions and processes from the outset.

The System Barrier

Despite some signs of progress and best practice in authentic disability representation, the global business community at large is lagging in its understanding and performance in this space. We have identified three key pillars of inclusive representation and the associated barriers to progress:

The lack of disability representation with the workforce is perhaps the most pressing barrier to progress across all three of these areas. To see real change, disabled employees must be recruited, supported, and given opportunities to progress at every stage of the process.

The Opportunity

It is clear that the status quo needs to change, and brands have both an obligation and a major opportunity to lead on disability inclusion by actively engaging disabled people in shaping their representation in media, marketing, and product design.

In our research with disabled consumers, we have observed an overwhelming demand for more inclusion and accessibility throughout the consumer journey. By ignoring this appetite for greater representation, businesses risk losing out on the global disability community’s monumental annual spending power.

There are signs of progress: 50% of disabled consumers recognise improvements in disability representation across media, marketing, and product design in the last 5 years. Now is the time for brands to build on this momentum by prioritising Accessible Experiences that serve the disabled community, Accurate Representation of the prevalence and lived experience of disability, and Authentic Narratives that move beyond outdated tropes and stereotypes.

Fundamental to these efforts is incorporating input from the disability community itself. Representation must capture the diversity and intersectionality of lived experience. Just as importantly, workforces need to represent and reflect the consumer base, so disabled people must be given a seat at the table at every stage of the process, be that in the writers’ room, at the design table, in the editing studio, or in board room.

It’s about flipping those stereotypes we see all too often as tropes of disability, and actually starting to have conversations where, yes, disabled people can have relationships, disabled people have friends, disabled people can be employed.

Dom Hyams, Head of Strategy, Purple Goat Agency

The Synchronised Collective Action

We are committed to supporting the global business community to improve their understanding, performance, and accountability when it comes to disability representation.

Recognising the need for clear guidance, we have worked with a diverse group of disability advocates and experts to define authentic disability representation and outline key principles that can be applied across industries and geographies.

Explore our Key Principles for Authentic Representation.

障害者の真のリプレゼンテーションに関する主要原則をご覧ください(日本語)

We are continuing to collaborate with the disability community and our partners and companies to develop further guidance that will drive change towards increasing the authentic representation of people with disabilities in the workplace and across all consumer touchpoints.

We will be launching our Synchronised Collective Action for Representation later this year. In the meantime, we are supportive of the progress already being made by our companies when it comes to disability representation.

Excitingly, our Iconic Partner Procter & Gamble (P&G) has recently announced a partnership with the World Federation of Advertisers, media owners, TV sales houses and other key industry partners to promote progress towards 100% advertising accessibility across Europe by 2025.

Some other great examples of inclusive representation from our partners and companies can be viewed in the videos below