Mattel is changing the game with disability representation
The disabled and neurodiverse community is one of the most underrepresented and misrepresented communities - even though we make up 26% of the population. In TV and Film, we are only represented 3.1% of the time - a mere eighth of our actual population.Recently, however, businesses have upped their game. But are they doing it the right way? There is a vast difference between representation and tokenism, and if media and brands don’t include disabled and neurodiverse people in all parts of the process, they end up missing the mark. One of the brands that have done a really excellent job is Mattel. They have created Barbie dolls that have different disabilities - ranging from being wheelchair users to having vitiligo. Plus, their representation is intersectional, with disabled dolls of different genders and ethnicities.
They have also started releasing these dolls internationally, and expanding their global reach so that children with disabilities worldwide can have access to them. Dolls that have just been released in the UK include one Barbie with hearing aids, another in a wheelchair, one with a prosthetic leg, and a Ken doll with Vitiligo. Mattel released these dolls alongside disabled models and celebrities - actress Rose Ayling-Ellis, teen model James Stewart, model and yoga teacher Faisha, and model Reneé Valentine.
But Barbie isn’t the only brand that Mattel has made more diverse, the toy company acquired Thomas the Tank Engine over a decade ago and since then they have taken strides forward to make the franchise more diverse and inclusive. In 2018, new female trains were introduced, as well as trains of different ethnicities and races - there are engines from Kenya, China, India, and Australia. Now, in 2022, we have an autistic train called “Bruno the Brake Engine”.
Many autistic children, although not all, have a particular love for trains. According to psychologists and autism specialists, this is due to a variety of different factors. So, it is no surprise that children with autism love Thomas the Tank Engine. There was actually a study done in the early 2000s that explored the relationship between the show and autistic kids. Although the study is old, its findings are still relevant today. Besides the usual attraction of trains, the characters on the show are easily identifiable by their simple and bright colors. The trains also have exaggerated and easy-to-read facial expressions which allow autistic children to easily identify how the characters are feeling.
Mattel has done a really great job with Bruno the Brake Engine. Let’s take a look at why.
They used an autistic voice actor. Nine-year-old British actor, Elliott Garcia, has done a wonderful job of bringing Bruno to life. Not only did they hire an autistic actor, they also adapted their casting process and recording process to make it accessible and comfortable for Elliott, who talks about his experience here.
Accurate representation. Bruno the Brake Engine has been carefully designed to portray autism realistically and beautifully. Of course, not all autistic people are the same or have the same experiences of autism, so the character will be unable to capture everyone’s lived experiences, but in general, Mattel has done a good job. The little train loves schedules, and he flaps his ladders whenever he experiences big emotions like excitement or upset. He also rolls in reserve at the back of the train, which gives the red engine a unique perspective. His outlook isn’t portrayed as negative, just different, which is a beautiful way to think about neurodiversity in general. Thankfully, Bruno also doesn’t fall into any of the 4 main disability tropes that we often see in media: The Hero, The Villain, The Fool, and The Burden. I talk in detail about these tropes and why they’re harmful to the disabled community in my Simplified Inclusion Training, which is available for both individuals and companies.
In this month’s Nuanceletter, I dig even deeper into disability representation and why it’s so important. You can sign up for my monthly Nuanceletter here to stay on top of what’s happening in the disability community.
Invisible Illness
I’m angry. No - I’m fuming.
The Daily Mail recently published an article by Emma James called Addicted to Being Sad that was absolutely atrocious to read. It’s fully-fledged, no holds barred, vicious attack on the disabled, chronically ill, and invisible illness community. James particularly focused on teenage girls, and women in general, doubling down on both systemic sexism and ableism in the medical industry. Her tagline reads “Teenage girls with invisible illnesses - known as 'Spoonies' - post TikToks of themselves crying or in hospital to generate thousands of likes - as experts raise concerns over internet-induced wave of mass anxiety”.
I could dissect this alone and have paragraphs to say but instead of giving her words too much power - I’m going to get straight to the facts.
Firstly, we are talking about people’s lives. These are real people who are living with debilitating illnesses, and once James has published her piece and closed her laptop, she can go on with her life as usual. These girls and women, however, still have to live with the realities of their disabilities, as well as the repercussions of what articles like this have on the way society and the medical industry treat them. James is misquoting them too - ascribing quotes to real people of things that they’ve never said. Marybeth Marshal is one of them, and she’s spoken out against the Daily Mail.
Essentially, James has denied that these illnesses are real or, when acknowledging their reality, infers that the symptoms and experiences are exaggerated for views and likes. She’s reduced very real suffering to mass hysteria. Women have been accused of hysteria for centuries. In fact, the term actually comes from the ancient Greek word for uterus. Plato believed that when women couldn’t conceive, their uterus would move around their body and cause physical and neurological symptoms - diagnosed as hysteria. The idea of female hysteria has been altered and repeated by multiple scholars over the centuries - from French neurologist Jean-Martin Charco, to Freud, and now, apparently, to Emma James from the Daily Mail.
But these women are not hysterical - they are suffering from invisible and chronic illnesses. According to the University of Massachusetts and Disabled World, over 10% of people in the USA have invisible illnesses and over 90% of chronic illnesses are invisible. The reality for those 10% is that they are continually undermined, ignored, and not taken seriously by the medical industry. Why? Because doctors view disability and chronic illness through the lens of the Medical Model. The Medical Model views disability as a problem that needs to be fixed - and therefore sees the disabled person as someone who is inherently broken. Doctors often don’t see the patient - they see the “problem” and when the problem doesn’t line up with what they can understand, then they dismiss the patient instead of actually doing what they can to help. Of course, there are excellent doctors out there, but this is sadly the overarching, lived experience for people with disabilities and invisible, chronic illnesses.
The Medical Model lens is one of the reasons that invisible and chronic illnesses take an average of four years to even diagnose - let alone effectively treat. Patricia Fennel, an expert in chronic and invisible illnesses, calls this process the “Sea of Ambiguity”. The imagery of being lost at sea, alone, with little direction or hope, is a striking one for people who are battling with invisible illnesses. A study in the Journal of Health Science and Education called Suicide is a Concern for the Chronic Invisible Illness Community published statistics show the stark and terrifying reality of how this community are being disatrously let down. For people who have Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, an illness maligned by The Daily Mail, sucide is the second leading cause of death. 50% of people with Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (POTS), another illness that James brushes off, are at high risk of suicide. And that’s just the start of it.
The people who suffer from these illnesses are finding community, encouragement, and understanding on social media. These “spoonies” - a term that James continually misuses and abuses - are no longer floating alone at sea - instead they are building a life raft and travesting difficult and usually isolating circumstances together. James taking community and turning it into something ugly and self-congratulatory is disgusting and, quite frankly, dangerous.
I’ve spent the past 5 years of my life in debilitating pain. I personally suffer from two invisible illnesses - Endometriosis and a Traumatic Brain Injury. These diseases have affected everything in my life - my career, my marriage, my friendships, and my mental health. It wasn’t until 2 weeks ago after an emergency surgery that we knew how bad my disease was - some of my organs are permanently damaged and the reality is that it’s not a question of if my disease will grow back, but when. There are 2 main reasons why invisible illnesses, like Endometriosis, take so long to be recognized, diagnosed, and treated:
Difficult to diagnose: I cannot tell you how many times I have been to the emergency room with debilitating pain, only to be told that there was nothing wrong with me and sent home. If you live in the States, or any country that has turned Health Care into a money-making machine, then you know how expensive trips to the ER are. To be sent home, after paying wild amounts of money, and to still have no answers as to why you’re in agony is one of the most difficult and most isolating things that I have ever experienced. Currently, we don’t have enough information on Endometriosis to diagnose it properly without surgery. Surgery as a diagnostic tool is extreme - it's invasive, traumatic, and expensive. Because of these limitations, it can take between 7 and 10 years to be diagnosed.
It’s expensive: Health Insurance in the USA is so expensive that medical bills can often bankrupt families. The average family of four pays $21,432 in health premiums annually. You might be thinking: “isn’t this usually covered by your employer?” Sure. But what happens when you’re too sick to work? You lose your insurance, your income, AND your ability to get medical care. I have permanent damage to my body because of how long it took for me to get surgery. Why did it take so long? Because we had to wait until I was on my husband’s insurance. The system is broken.
At the end of the day, the Daily Mail isn’t exactly known for journalistic integrity, so why is it so infuriating that Emma James discredited the necessary activism and movement that these “attention seeking spoonies” have created?
Because despite her lack of professionalism and research, she is still given a platform that reaches over 6.6 million people.
We know the impact of media on people’s perceptions and biases. Articles like this from journalists like Emma James and The Daily Mail are dangerous. I’m sure that James - or whoever assigned her this article - didn’t wake up one day and decide “You know what I feel like doing? I feel like writing a dangerous article that will lead to the public not taking the lived experiences of disabled people seriously. I hope it leads to growth of ableism within the medical industry and increases isolation of disabled people which will exacerbate their rates of depression, PTSD, and suicide.” But the reality is that because of her implicit, and explicit, biases - she did just that. One thing I talk about often is the idea of funnels of oppression - and it’s something that James has played right into with this article.
They start as a simple, but negative, implicit bias that goes unchecked. Then those individuals with unchecked biases create systems within society, and because they are not including disabled people within them, the systems themselves are not inclusive. Systems, by nature, are built to impact more people, so the non inclusive systems these people create then go on to reinforce negative implicit bias and the cycle grows and grows.
What does this look like in practice? Let’s say someone reads this article and they happen to be a manager. Their implicit bias is informed by this article rather than the lived experiences of disabled people. This manager’s direct report has an invisible illness and needs accommodations. That manager will now view their accommodations as unnecessary or seeking attention. They refuse their accommodations. The employee cannot accomplish their job any longer because of a lack of accessibility. The employee loses their job along with their health insurance. Moving forward, that same manager refuses to hire or accommodate disabled workers because of this article. The remaining team sees this and is scared to request accommodations for themselves, or other direct reports. With every iteration, the ableism grows.
I didn’t create my Simplified Inclusion Training because I was bored and had nothing better to do. I created it from my bed, horizontal, with a heating pad and tears streaming down my face because my pain was excruciating and the only thing that brought me even a sliver of solace was the hope that someday those in the media, marketing, and entertainment industries might take the lived experiences of disabled people seriously.
If you lead a team - especially if they are responsible for communicating to large audiences - you need to make sure that your content doesn’t fall into this trap. Our lives and progress depend on it.
So how can you help? Here’s 3 quick ways:
Retweet this article and tag The Daily Mail and Emma James to ask them to remove this heinous article.
Talk to whoever is in charge of HR, career development or media/marketing initiatives at your place of work to address implicit bias and prevent these ideas from being perpetuated.
Commit to learning about ableism - follow along to my advocacy and that of other disabled people.
Is Lizzo Ableist?
When you think of ableist celebrities one of the last people who probably comes to mind is Lizzo. But the reality is she is - because we all have ableism in us. There has never been a more outspoken artist when it comes to body positivity and acceptance than Lizzo. Not only does her music celebrate body positivity and positive mental health, she’s also used her personal platform to advocate for traditionally marginalized communities: Queer, Trans, BIPOC and more. However in her most recent single released this past Friday she used an ableist slur and is receiving an outpouring of disappointment from the disability community.
The lyrics from her newest song ‘Grrrls’, which have caused such a strong reaction are:
“Hold my bag, bitch, hold my bag / Do you see this shit? I’ma sp*z.”
While sp*z is commonly used in society to note that someone is about to ‘freak out’ or ‘go crazy’, the term originates from the word ‘spastic’, which is used medically to describe the spasms from conditions like cerebral palsy. The word is only used to describe people with disabilities negatively. Disability activists like Callum Stephen, Shelby Lynch and Imani Barbarin have all come forward explaining what it is like to be a person living with the condition the word is derived from.
So how did she get here? How did this song get to the point where it was released from a major record label by one of the most inclusive artists without anyone stopping to think “Wait… this isn’t right. This is going to harm people. Let’s rethink this.”
There are many theories floating around by non disabled people about how we got here such as…
Hot Take 1: Lizzo didn’t know better:
I would bet the remainder of my left arm this is true. We all function in society with a level of implicit bias about many things and I’m sure Lizzo had no intention of harming the disabled community. Lizzo has been extremely inclusive in other moments of the disability community, most recently including them in mashups of her “About Damn Time” videos on Tiktok.
Something that we’re seeing with this expression of disappointment amongst fans of Lizzo is that there is an element of compassion that we don’t often see in public call outs. Activists are not calling for an end to her career but rather a change of lyrics and a moment to educate the pop star. This combination of disappointment and compassion stems from an understanding that the pop star has shown throughout her entire career that she want marginalized communities to be seen, included and celebrated and likely meant no harm.
Despite Lizzo not intending on harming the disability community that was not the impact. The impact was in fact harmful, and understanding the nuance behind language and the power of words is something all people need to be cognizant of but especially culture creators like Lizzo. As a public figure, the responsibility to examine and interrogate implicit bias is extremely important.
Hot Take 2: The term has a different meanings in different circles
Language matters.
Many people are saying that in the United States this isn’t an offensive term, and it’s only considered offensive in the UK or Australia. Others are saying that in AAVE it has a different meaning and therefore the artist is exempt.
The reality is that the Miriam Webster definition defines the term as offensive, and that the majority of disabled activists expressing concern are in fact BIPOC themselves.
Others are echoing talking points that the term is now used to describe someone who is “crazy,” “insane” or someone who is going to “freak out.” What these people fail to realize is that these terms are also ableist. Mental health advocates have been encouraging society to stop using these terms as they perpetuate negative stereotypes about people experiencing mental health diagnosis. Regardless of what the word means in the context of US vs UK or what the term now can mean in many other contexts, there are two important factors to keep at the top of mind when thinking through scenarios like this:
The term was originally used to describe disabled people with CP and is still used with negative and offensive connotations
People with lived experience of disability, CP, and other diagnosis where spasms are involved have come forward to say “this hurts us”
The real reason of how we ended up here? Ableism is unaddressed in diversity initiatives.
One of the most infamously inclusive artists to get called out for accidentally perpetuating ableism is an obviously manifestation of the fact that while 90% of companies have initiatives for DEIB, only 4% include disability within them. Most people do not categorize disability as a marginalized community worth understanding, valuing and including which is not only a massive micro-aggression, it’s also a missed business opportunity that can lead to public relations nightmares like this.
How to avoid the situation:
Take personal responsibility for your own growth
We live in a society that has been built from an ableist perspective. Social Darwinism taught tat only the “fittest” should survive and justified forced sterilization and institutionalization of disabled people. The Undesirables Act was an immigration law that prevented disabled people from entering the country. The Ugly Laws forbade disabled people from being seen in restaurants, grocery stores or any public places. Freakshows were the only means for disabled people to have any form of independence where they were exploited and used as props for people to pay money to point, stare, laugh and gawk at. The ADA has only been the law of the land for 30 years, and it’s not a self enforcing law therefore it’s quite ineffective.
Every part of our society was created through an ableist lens, and we are therefore steeped in the same perspective just by participating in society. It is our responsibility as human beings to take the unlearning of this perspective seriously and commit to it in all areas of our lives.Educate your teams
Lizzo doesn’t create her music in a silo. She has producers, she has other artists, she has assistants, she has publicists and marketers. As I have already stated Lizzo is an incredibly inclusive artist and I highly doubt she would have used the word had she known the connotation. However, it appears that either nobody on her team knew or nobody on her team cared that this word is considered a slur by the disability community.
A phrase I use in all of my teachings is “funnels of oppression” which refers to the fact that most people operate with levels of ableist implicit bias because of the systemic ableism mentioned above and don’t address it, but then they go on to create more parts of society and culture. Regardless of the level of seniority, we all create systems and if we don’t examine our implicit bias those systems will automatically become oppressive or harmful to some group of people.
If Atlantic had educated their teams effectively on ableism and implicit bias, not just one but many people would have understood this term to be harmful and could have spoken up.
Hire Disabled People
Disabled people are massively under represented in media, marketing and entertainment industries. While we make up over 25% of the population we are only featured in these industries 3.1% of the time. Whether it’s hiring disability consultants to review scripts or lyrics, building inclusivity boards that can help course correct before a potentially problematic item goes public or hiring disabled people as a part of your team and creating safe spaces so they can voice concerns - you need to have disabled people at the table. Entertainment, marketing and media create culture which is why the lack of inclusion is extremely alarming. An anthem of the disability community has always been “nothing about us without us” because we need to be included but we need to be included in ways that are helpful to our community.
The reality is that Lizzo / Atlantic is not the first and will not be the last entertainer and entertainment companies to harm disabled people. Whether it’s Sia’s “Music” or “The Witches” starring Anne Hathaway on HBO or now Lizzo with “Grrrls” we’re seeing a common theme - well intentioned, talented artists with big brands behind them continuing to create ableist content. Not only is this harming the disabled community, but it’s bad for business. Research shows that disability-inclusive workplaces significantly increase revenue, profit margins, and employee productivity. Inclusive or universal design, is the concept that when things are designed for people with permanent disabilities, everyone in society benefits. It’s sometimes referred to as the “curb-cut effect” as a curb-cut was designed for wheel-chair users, but people pushing strollers, or people riding bikes, or a film crew unloading equipment, also benefit. In 2019 the Ruderman Family Foundation found that Hollywood is leaving approximately $125 billion dollars annually on the table by not having authentic and accurate disability representation.
I’d love to help you + your team learn about ableism and avoid creating harmful + ableist content and build trust with the largest marginalized community in the world: disabled people.
Snickering was involved
This weekend, something happened to me that hasn’t happened since I was a child: a group of people were staring, pointing, and commenting on my arm. Snickering was involved.
My husband and I decided to go and grab a drink on Friday night, and we were sitting at the bar catching up after a really busy week. He’s my husband, so I see him every day, but between client work and launching my ableism trainings we’ve hardly had time during the week to talk about what’s actually going on. So there we were, me filling him in on the exciting and amazing partnerships and clients I was excited about working with for Disability Pride Month, and I noticed a group of four fully grown adults looking at my arm and making gestures on their elbow, the place that my arm has fingers.
“No way,” I thought, “There's no way these people are so ignorant that in the middle of one of the busiest restaurants in the North Loop, that they’d point and stare and make my little arm the focus of their conversation.” I pressed my lips together, enlarged my eyes, and made a subtle gesture as if to say “yeah, I see you guys” and they all snickered.
It confirmed what I already knew: these ignorant individuals were making my disabled arm the focal point of their happy hour conversation. I had to choke back immediate tears, and whispered calmly to my husband what was going on so as to not give them the satisfaction that their rude behavior was getting to me.
“Don’t you have anything better to talk about?!”
“Do you live under a rock?!”
“I’m signed with four modeling agencies and you sure as hell aren’t.”
“This is so ignorant and embarrassing for you.”
“This is why I do what I do, this is why we need to educate people.”
“I have a hot, amazing, incredible husband next to me - I’ve come so far and opinions like this don’t matter.”
“Fuck them.”
It didn’t matter how much self-consoling I did, my reaction was the same as when I was a child: I wanted to curl up into a ball and disappear.
It immediately brought me back to being a kid at recess - other kids not wanting to play with me, calling me a T-Rex, and running away from me. In that moment, the hardest part wasn’t just ignoring the idiots across the bar from us - it was reliving the experiences I had as a child and knowing that I didn’t have any self-consoling statements back then. I had no idea how my life would turn out. All I knew was that the way I was born was outside of my control, and all I wanted was to have a friend.
I talk about this stuff for a living. I willingly go into circles of ignorance to help people move from “What is Ableism?” to a full blown ally to disabled people. I provide continued education to insure the progress continues. I’ve developed programs, resources, and training modules to help people and businesses grow with a better understanding of what 25% of the population experiences: ableism. This is my job, this is my passion, this is the thing I believe I was born to do - and I’m proud of this important work.
One thing I talk about often is the idea of funnels of oppression.
They start as a simple, but negative, implicit bias that goes unchecked. Then those individuals with unchecked biases create systems within society, and because they are not including disabled people within them, the systems themselves are not inclusive. The non inclusive systems these people create then go on to reinforce negative implicit bias and the cycle grows and grows.
The inappropriate behavior of these bar patrons stems from the implicit bias reinforced at Freakshows.
In the late 1800s and early 1900s, the only place in society that disabled people were allowed to be seen were Freakshows where non disabled people would pay money to point at, gawk at, be horrified by, and snicker at disabled people. The original implicit bias was that disabled people are rare and scary, which led little capitalists to see an opportunity in exploiting disabled people. The system that was created were Freakshows. The Freakshows reinforced negative implicit biases for attendees, and those attendees went on to build non inclusive systems.
Freakshows reinforced the belief that disabled people were unsightly, ugly, and not worthy of being seen by society. This same funnel has led to disabled people not being featured in media, marketing, and entertainment - despite disabled people being 25% of the population, we are only represented in these industries 3.1% of the time. Having been in the marketing and entertainment industries for a large portion of my career I know that this is a systemic issue - while there are concentrated efforts to make sure that other marginalized groups are represented and celebrated, those same efforts do not exist for disabled people. While 90% of companies say they have a plan for DEI or diversity, only 4% include disabled people within that. This is unacceptable, and this system leads to biases like these individuals at the bar we went to.
The thing that has been at the forefront of my mind ever since was that these people were likely in the middle of their careers. They were in their upper 30s to mid 50s and had never had their implicit bias questioned. These people were likely at least at some form of a managerial level, and you know what managers do? Create systems. Hire and promote. Make decisions about who is included and who isn’t.
I bet their supervisors have no idea what is going on internally for these people, and they’d likely be horrified knowing this story. Likely these individuals have never been presented with information about ableism or how this implicit bias has been developed, they’re going along with what society says about disabled people, and as a result when they get a few beers in them they treat people from marginalized backgrounds horribly. I would be willing to bet the remainder of my left arm if their supervisors knew this was how they behaved they’d be embarrassed, they’d feel remorseful and they’d wish they had educated themselves and their team about ableist implicit bias.
The studies show that companies that prioritize disability inclusion throughout their entire company have 28% higher revenue. We know that people who have a close relationship to disability have over $8.68T in disposable income in the USA alone. The numbers are there as to why prioritizing disabled people and inclusion needs to happen.
Chances are if you made it this far, you already recognize this as such a huge need and you want to be a part of the solution. I appreciate that - and you - so much. Disability Pride Month is in July and it is a great time to think of how to start taking steps in the right direction to prioritize disability year round.
I accepted long ago that I likely won’t see the end of ableism in my lifetime, this is problem spanning multiple millenniums and it’s not going to be fixed overnight. But just because the road is long, and hard, doesn’t mean that we throw up our hands and do nothing. It’s time to roll up our sleeves, prepare ourselves to get uncomfortable and get to work. Growth happens when we’re uncomfortable, internally and business wise. Regardless of where you’re at in your journey - total novice or ready and willing to educate your entire workforce - if you’re committed to our community, I’m committed to creating systems to help you do this.
Let’s work together so that disabled people can have their basic civil and human rights with no snickering involved.
The Microaggression 90% of companies are making
We’re less than 6 weeks out from Disability Pride Month (July) and chances are you probably don’t have a plan for Disability Pride set in motion. Let’s talk about how that’s a microaggression and what that means for disabled people.
Whenever I teach about ableism, I teach through two perspectives: implicit bias and systemic ableism.
Oppression Funnels
These two types of ableism create a funnel of oppression for disabled people. Our society was built by people who share the incorrect implicit bias, or undetected, unexamined belief, that disabled people are inferior to non disabled people. Therefore, as they created various elements of our society, our society was then built with ableism and systems were created without including disabled people into society. Then, those systems exclude disabled people and because disabled people are not a part of society, it reinforces ableist implicit bias.
The implicit bias that affects representation in both business and entertainment circles has been systematically enforced for centuries dating all the way back to the medieval times when your physical appearance was believed to equate to virtue and moral standing. During these times society believed that disability was either a sign that the person was receiving consequences for sin, or that the disabled person was experiencing purgatory on earth.
While as a people we have come to realize that disability is not something we believe is purgatory on earth or a consequence of sin, our storytelling still reflects many of these beliefs. Our current storytelling also still lines up with the touring Freakshows during the Victorian era. Disabled people were often sold into Freakshows by their families and forced to perform as it was the only form of employment they could engage in, and they were otherwise seen as a financial burden. Freakshows and Medieval mindsets are what created the implicit bias that disabled people should be feared, and this was systemically enforced by the legal system through the creation of The Ugly Laws.
The Ugly Laws were municipal laws that stated that no disabled or “unsightly” person should be permitted to be seen in public, leaving disabled people with no opportunities for work, community, access to health care or basic human rights. The last of these laws were overturned in 1971.
Let’s take a look at how this ableist implicit bias turned into systemic oppression, back into implicit biases and then into more systemic oppression.
The implicit bias is represented in blue and the systemic oppression is represented in teal.
The beliefs of Medieval times are not something that went away with the passage of the ADA. Because the ADA is not a self enforcing law, the burden of enforcing it lies on the very community it is supposed to protect: disabled people. Statistics show that complaints of ADA violations only have a 13% rate of being settled.
The Ugly Laws were a systemic form of oppression that created or reinforced the belief that disabled people were not worthy of inclusion in everyday life, or even looking at, and they still inform our implicit bias today. This is reinforced by the lack of inclusion from media, marketing and entertainment industries and it is reinforced by the lack of inclusion in diversity initiatives.
The red circle? That’s you.
That’s right where you’re at - you have the power to change the way disabled people are portrayed in media, marketing, entertainment. You have the power to include disabled people in your ERG, HR and DEI practices. You have the power to either take yourself - and your company - out of this oppression funnel that grows with each iteration, or stick with the status quo.
Chances are if you’re reading this you already know you should be prioritizing disability in your company from a moral standpoint, but convincing your boss, HR or DEI department to make the investment is the challenging piece. I’ve broken it down into researched points about how this affects your ROI so that all you have to do is forward this onto the decision makers.
In media, marketing, and entertainment:
Disability is the largest minority group in the world - we’re 25% of the population but we’re only featured in media, marketing and entertainment 3.1% of the time. Furthermore, when we are represented it’s usually through problematic stereotypes, stigmas and tropes that the disability community is working hard to overturn.
In family films, disabled characters are over 15% more likely to need to be rescued, as well as 2X more likely to die.
ROI opportunity:
Disability isn’t just the largest minority group in the world, it also affects 73% of the marketplace in the USA. The 2020 Global Economics Report on Disability shows that those who have a personal relationship with disability (either disabled themselves or have a close family member / friend who is disabled) have over $8.68T in disposable income. We know that human beings are emotional creatures when it applies to our buying habits, and the lack of prioritization of this community will give your brand a cutting edge on competitors when you learn to include disabled people in equitable ways.
In diversity circles:
The fact that 90% of companies have some plan for diversity, but only 4% include disability is one of the most glaring microaggressions we face. Diversity circles are the exact circles we should be included in.
When companies do prioritize disability by hiring more disabled people and by accommodating them, the results are astounding. Studies have shown that companies like these see double the net income, 28% higher revenue, and 30% higher profit margins.
ROI opportunity:
Plus, this should go without saying but disability has the most opportunity for intersectionality with other marginalized communities. For example, over a third of people in the LGBTQIA+ community have a disability. The highest statistics are for bisexual men, 40% of whom identify as disabled.
What now?
Without a deep understanding of how we’ve gotten to such a deep place of inaccessibility and exclusion, it’s important to educate your entire team about the importance of including disabled people and understanding our implicit bias.
When we’re ignorant, we continue to perpetuate systemic ableism and implicit biases. Education is vital if we want to see practical change to the way society treats disabled people. Purposefully choosing not to educate yourself, or your staff, leaves people in ignorance, and actively hurts disabled people - and your business.
Whether you’re an individual or a team leader, learning about your own implicit biases and developing a better understanding of disability culture is the first place to start. Once you learn the basics of ableism, then you are ready to engage with internal efforts to bring in more disabled team members, make your workplaces more physically accessible and include disabled people in your company in ways that don’t perpetuate negative stereotypes.
Ready to take the next step?
Internalized Ableism
When I was a child I hated being disabled.
Being disabled meant I was bullied. Being disabled meant I had to have a ton of surgeries. Being disabled meant I saw nobody who looked like me on TV or in advertisements. And being disabled meant I was pulled out of classes for my IEP (individualized education plan - a form of special ed).
Whenever I’d hear someone refer to my disability - whether directly or through a misnomer like “special needs” - I’d immediately clap back with a statement about how “I’m not disabled, I can do anything everyone else can.” I was dealing with internalized ableism.
Internalized ableism is when ableist implicit bias - AKA the negative beliefs surrounding disability that are formed from the society we live in - manifests itself in a disabled person themselves. I was born in the early 90s, just after disabled people had won the fight for the ADA, and society still looked at the disabled community through a lens of pity or dread. This led me to view my own disability as something that I wanted to hide and separate myself from as far as I could.
The reality is that I was (and still am) disabled. I couldn’t do everything that all of the other kids my age could do - learning to write, type, and do anything with fine motor skills in my hands was extremely difficult and required years of physical and occupational therapy. I couldn’t participate in many of the activities in recess or gym class. When I’d get pulled from my classes to have IEP specialists work with me, I resented it - and them. Even back then, I was a stubborn spitfire and internalized ableism had me convinced that I didn’t need their help. I’d often cross my arms and refuse to participate because “I could figure it out on my own.”
As an adult, I’m grateful that I eventually did have to cave and accept help from those OTs and PTs because the exact things that I needed an IEP for are how I’ve built my career. I started my career in marketing as a copywriter, which led to more strategy focused work and eventually to DEIB. I’m also a personal trainer and have built an online “fun business” where I coach others online. Without the external intervention and accommodations that I needed, I wouldn’t have the success I have today.
The issue of internal ableism and the need for accommodations are things that affect every workplace. Our culture was built by individuals with ableist implicit bias, so our entire systems are built without disabled people in mind. Many workplaces view accommodations just as bureaucratic structures to put into place, but the reality is that you likely have individuals in your workplace who do have disabilities and aren’t able or willing to come forward and advocate for adaptations that they need. Let’s look at four potential reasons that your team members might not be asking for accommodations that they need:
Internalized Ableism: Like myself growing up, many disabled people deal with internal battles with their own disability and don’t want to identify as disabled because of the connotations the word has. Everyone is on their own journey when it comes to accepting themselves, and the addition of disability in the mix makes that even more nuanced. While they may not be ready to identify as someone who has a disability, they still may need accommodations to help them be more successful in the workplace. By prioritizing creating spaces that offer accommodations for people in general, those who don’t identify as disabled but do have disabilities can receive the accommodations they need as they come to terms with their disabilities.
Fear of Retaliation: You’re probably thinking - but that’s illegal right? The ADA bans discrimination based on the status of disability. While technically this is true, the ADA is not a self enforcing law, and therefore, it’s not a very effective law. When an ADA violation is made, a report has to be filed and when it comes to discrimination on the basis of disability the disabled person has to obtain legal representation. Legal fees are extremely expensive, disabled people have unemployment rates of 79.9% and it is legal to pay disabled people less than minimum wage - so we don’t necessarily have the funds to do this. Additionally, most lawyers won’t work on contingency fees when it comes to workplace discrimination cases unless it is an undeniable form of discrimination or retaliation due to the fact that the Labor Bureau reports that only 13% of disability discrimination cases are settled.
Invisible Disabilities: While 25% of the world has a disability, the majority of those are invisible disabilities so they may not be obvious. Most often we see disability signage focusing on wheelchairs, ramps, or other visual aids to communicate to viewers that disability is represented, but in reality only 6% of people who have disabilities use an external tool such as a cane, wheelchair or other assistive device. When people have invisible disabilities the temptation to mask or hide their disabilities is very common.
Undiagnosed Disabilities: It’s estimated that 2 out of 5 people who have a learning disability go undiagnosed. There are multiple reasons that contribute to this - including lack of affordable health care and medical ableism.
So, if you have disabled people in your company but you don’t know you have disabled people in your company what can you do?
Educate yourself and your team about implicit bias: You can’t fix a problem within your company that you don’t understand yourself. Learn about ableism, implicit bias, and how those manifest themselves in our everyday lives. Be diligent about recognizing these things in yourself and your community.
Bring in accessibility specialists: The status quo when it comes to accommodations is to wait until someone requests an accommodation, then decide if it brings undue hardship on your company, and then obtain it. This model puts significant emotional labor on the disabled person. Work with accessibility specialists to make a list of available accommodations to your workforce for any reason - disability or not - if it would make their workplace more comfortable and increase productivity
Listen to disabled people: When someone points out that something is inaccessible, take it with merit and look for ways to apply company wide changes.
If you’re ready to take the next steps towards creating a truly accessible workplace, we have a free tool to help you generate a plan that fits your specific needs.
You probably think your business doesn't have any ableist employees. But you're wrong. And it's a big problem.
It all begins with an idea.
If you're reading this, then congratulations! You're already miles ahead of most of society when it comes to being a disability ally, simply because you made it through the first step of fighting ableism: realizing it exists.
While you've realized ableism exists, you probably don't understand the nuance and history of ableism and, unless you have a disability yourself, you’re lacking the understanding that accompanies lived experience. All you know is that you are a person who cares, and that if your business wants to grow and serve more people, it needs to evolve.
That's where I come in.
I have lived my life as a disabled person, starting my work in international advocacy spaces, and spending the last 9 years of my career in marketing and sales roles. I know exactly how nuanced the world of disability is, and how to navigate it - both to make the world a better place for disabled people and to benefit your bottom line.
Let's start with you: You have no problem with disabled people. You're a normal person, right? You think disability is just another part of who someone is - just like their gender, race or sexual orientation. But does that mean you're not ableist? Not at all.
Ableism manifests itself in many ways, but the two lenses I teach about are systemic ableism and internal ableism, also called implicit bias.
When we talk about systemic ableism, we are inherently exploring the entanglement ableism has with sexism, white supremacy, colonialism and capitalism. Ableism works alongside these other forms of systemic bias or oppression because it is a part of what co-creates the idea of an “ideal” expectation of body and mind: a non-disabled body and mind.
Even though ableism is a systemic form of oppression it is the least talked about in DEI trainings - which is the exact space it should be talked about the most. When I describe “a system of oppression” I mean that there is and was prejudice, or a particular way of thinking, which believes that disability is a bad thing. This thinking was shared by most people who built the legal, physical, political infrastructure that we all live in, and that the effect and impact of that shared negative perspective is oppressive to subgroups of people - whether intentionally or unintentionally.
Because the individuals who crafted how our society functions shared this negative thinking towards disability, you and I are consistently steeped in these same beliefs every single day - just by participating in the world that they built. We all have ableism in us - and it is something we need to be constantly working at to change.
Just like you have ableism in you, so do your coworkers. So do your clients. So do your teams. Because they participate in a world that was built from an ableist mindset, then the stigmas and stereotypes that surround them affect their implicit bias, too.
Our world is just not built for disabled people. That isn't a secret, and it’s not your fault. However, you have the opportunity to be a part of changing it. Nearly all HR leaders report that disability inclusion is extremely important to their companies, yet more than 96% of companies do not include disability within their DEI initiatives. Disability equality is not only something which companies should prioritize for moral reasons, it also pays off financially. A disability can hinder someone from performing well in their role, so it's just good business sense to provide accommodations that will allow disabled employees to do their jobs effectively.
It's important to ask:
What would happen if businesses were truly able to understand and accommodate disabled people? What if they took advantage of the power of neurodiverse thinking without relying on stereotypes? How much more powerful would their teams be if they were truly inclusive?
Well, one answer we know is that revenue would increase. Companies which intentionally hire more disabled people have 30% higher economic profit margins, 28% higher revenue, and double the net income.
The bottom line is this: if your organization wants to be a disability-friendly workplace and grow to its fullest potential then you have to be proactively inclusive. That doesn't mean putting diversity posters around the office. It means having company wide education opportunities about ableism, disability rights, and implicit bias. Disabled people deserve dignity—and your company can’t get left behind in the twenty-first century. If you've ever tried to address these barriers by working on your own, then you’ll know that it can feel daunting, exhaustin, and futile. But what if that wasn't true? What if all you needed was someone to break down extremely nuanced topics and provide expert resources? Well, that’s what I’m here for.
For more information about working with Kelsey click here: