I’m a weirdo who still likes watching TV live, with the commercials. I’m not riveted to the screen during them, obviously, but I catch them from the corner of my eye. And one thing I’ve noticed this year is that there has been a definite increase in the number of disabled people seen in commercials. And most of those aren’t even about disability, but there are still disabled people in them, living their lives, advertising whatever the commercial is for and showing watchers that disabled people are more than their disability.
Here are some of them, mostly from Canada, of course, since that is where my TV comes from:
The Canadian Tire Jumpstart Charities is a fund that injects money into sports programs for children, so that all Canadian children can have the same access to sports.
At 0:23 in the commercial, we see a kid in a wheelchair playing tennis. I’m sure that when you think about sports, your first thought is not for disabled kids, but this shows that yes, kids in wheelchairs can and do participate in sports! In fact, Jumpstart has a parasport program exclusively for children and youth with disabilities!
The Laughing Cow. Because the link between cheese and disability is obvious, no? The ad, celebrating the company’s 100th anniversary, is all about showing people laughing and having fun. Two of those people are two men in wheelchairs, at 0:15, playing basketball. Once again, showing disability as a normal part of life, and that people can laugh and have fun even if they’re disabled.
According to this video’s description, AirBnB ran a campaign where they invited photographers to take trips with their family and friends, and then send them the pictures so they could make an ad from them. I will smoothly sidestep how iffy this sounds as a freelancer (like, were they paid or was this a “for exposure” kind of thing?) and focus on this ad.
It portrays Siân’s daughters Martha and Alice, who has Down syndrome. The collection of sweet photos shows not the disability, but the life of the disabled kid. It shows that a disabled person’s family isn’t there to just take care of them, but also to love them and have fun with them and enjoy their company. It shows that disabled people can have and enjoy holidays just like everybody else. That a disabled person’s life doesn’t always have to be only about disability.
2021 was a census year for us up here. This ad played on TV an annoyingly high number of times during a few months, but I was always excited to see it, because of the man in the wheelchair at 0:10. And not only is he in a wheelchair, he takes the bus in a wheelchair! He’s used to illustrate the part of the census that’s about public transit. Because hey, disabled people use that too!
(Or, you know, we’d like to if it was accessible…)
In this one, GlaxoSmithKline stresses the importance of teens getting their meningitis B vaccine. This can easily be interpreted as them saying “get our vaccine or you might end up disabled, and being disabled is the worst thing that could ever happen to you,” which would be a terrible thing to say. But I’d rather point out the fact that none of the three teens they portray seems to be suffering too much from their disability. We see Kimberly getting ready for her prom, Gabriel lifting weights, Sabrina going off to college. None of them have had their life ruined because of a disability. Which is appropriate, because a disability doesn’t really ruin your life. Good on GSK for showing us disabled people doing “normal” things “despite” their disability.
(That said, vaccines are good. If you haven’t yet and you can, get your COVID jab!)
Speaking of COVID vaccines, Canada put out an ad encouraging us to get ours featuring a little girl in a wheelchair at 0:07. She is smiling, eating cotton candy, and moving herself in an electric wheelchair. I hope she inspired many Canadians to get jabbed!
I dearly hope this sudden spurt of seeing disabled people exist on television is indicative of a trend, that we’ll see more and more of the same in years to come (and maybe not all of them white people). Imagine a beer commercial where a group of friends is watching a hockey game on TV, and one of them is in a wheelchair? A popcorn ad in which a couple is watching a movie with subtitles? A smartphone commercial portraying somebody using text-to-speech and Braille?
And why stop there? Make television series and movies with disabled people too. (Notice that I said “with disabled people,” not “about disabled people” or “with abled people pretending to be disabled.”) We’ll watch them, promise!
(Yes, I know this will probably never happen, but let me dream!)
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