Christina Mallon, Head of Inclusive Design and Accessibility, Wunderman Thompson

Over the past few years, we’ve been on an upward trajectory of heightened awareness and widened inclusion for people with disabilities. In the wake of COVID-19, do you think this trajectory has been disrupted?

No—because we’re seeing a lot of people really work their empathy muscles [during the COVID-19 pandemic]. You’re not just thinking of yourself; you’re thinking of others. So, when you talk about advertising representation from a marketing standpoint or a product standpoint, the designers who are creating that content are going to have more empathy and be able to think outside their own box of experiences. And I believe that inclusion will be very important and may even be accelerated because of COVID-19.

That being said, do you think there are any gaps or flaws currently in how brands are—or are not—talking to disabled audiences?

There definitely is an inclusion revolution happening and I don’t think COVID-19 is going to have a negative impact on that. But even in this inclusion revolution, only 4% of brands are thinking about making their offerings disability inclusive. So, when it comes to disability inclusion, really only a handful—and I’m saying one handful—of brands is doing it correctly, or even thinking about it. So, yes, there are huge gaps.

From a marketing standpoint, one of the biggest problems I have seen is that brands are using “inspirational porn” as their messaging. The term “inspirational porn” was coined by Stella Young, and it’s the idea that advertising for people with disabilities is created to make the viewer—who’s not disabled—feel warm and fuzzy about it. The problem with it is that it’s not accurately representing people with disabilities; it’s really for the viewer who doesn’t have a disability. That is where most brands are when it comes to showing disability representation within their marketing.

Sometimes those narratives make it worse for everyone—the biggest challenge that I’ve had personally, as a person with a disability, is that people don’t expect me to be anything because they haven’t seen success from people with disabilities in marketing. For example, every time I’m on a business trip (which used to be every week), most of the time people saw that I was disabled and thought that I was traveling for medical treatment. They never considered that I’d be going for work. Or they were scared for me traveling alone. And that’s not because these people aren’t smart or are rude; it’s because they haven’t seen proper representation.

That is the biggest gap I see: when people try for disability representation and they do it poorly.

Are any brands speaking to disabled audiences well and representing them accurately?

Some brands that are really doing it well—they are clients of mine, but I do believe they’re doing it well—are Microsoft, Tommy Hilfiger and Mars. They are all doing great representation of people with disabilities that is not just inspiration porn.

Physical accessibility has been a major focus of inclusive design in the past. But now that so many people are dependent on digital services, why is it important for brands to be thinking about digital accessibility?

The United States and Europe and then some other countries outside of those two regions have laws saying that all digital experiences need to be accessible for people with disabilities. But most brands do not make their websites, apps, social media posts or even their platforms accessible.

For COVID-19, we are running into some huge issues—and these become human right issues. Let’s say Boris Johnson is doing a big state of the union talking about COVID-19, but he does not have a sign language interpreter. Yes, you can turn closed captioning on your television, but it doesn’t capture everything; sign language does. If you’re not able to pick up everything because you’re deaf, you might be endangering yourself and others. That’s a big issue. Or if I’m a blind person and I can’t get access to descriptive audio to a chart that the New York Times put out to show how COVID cases are projected to increase or decrease, how am I going to know?

Another issue is if your company uses Teams versus Zoom. Teams has built in captioning, but Zoom does not—in Zoom, you have to add in a plugin to do that from a third-party company. That additional ask that Zoom is making of consumers is a lot when it comes to, for example, a busy mom trying to take care of her kids and get on a meeting, but she’s deaf.

Those are just two ways in which things that weren’t designed with digital accessibility can have a huge impact on quality of life, especially during COVID-19.

Mental health concerns have been a big focus during COVID-19 and lockdowns, but that gets heightened in a different way for disabled communities. What are mental health implications for people with disabilities that brands might not be considering?

Even before COVID-19, the outside world was not accessible—it’s not designed for people with different abilities. Anyone with disabilities has to spend a lot of the time in their home. So being somewhat trapped in your home is something disabled people are used to; that aspect [of COVID-19] is a part of their normal life, so I wouldn’t see as much of an increase in stress because of that specifically.

Where I do see the mental health concern for people with disabilities is the fear that they’re not going to get healthcare. Even though the president was saying that there are enough ventilators for everyone, hospitals were saying there aren’t, and that lack of consistent messaging makes everything really scary.

If you have a preexisting condition, it doesn’t matter if your governor opens up your town or your city or your state; it still doesn’t mean you can go out. Not until a vaccine is available.

That lack of having something to look forward to is tough. I work with a nonprofit group for kids with muscular dystrophy, and they have a summer camp. For a lot of the kids that attend, it is the only outdoor interaction or interaction with other kids with muscular dystrophy they have all year—and it’s closed now. Those type of events that mean so much to people and only happen once a year are being cancelled on a mass scale.

So that’s where mental health will become a serious issue for people with disabilities.