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The Disability and…Podcast gets right to the heart of some of the most pressing issues in arts, culture and beyond with a series of bold, provocative and insightful interviews with disabled artists, key industry figures and the odd legend. The Disability and…Podcast is currently monthly.
Intro
Welcome to the Disability and... podcast. This month. Dr Alison Wilde, an Assistant Professor of Social Sciences at Northumbria University, chats with Dr Ella Houston, a senior lecturer in Disability Studies at Liverpool Hope University, about her book Advertising Disability and how pro diversity advertising further stigmatises disabled people.
Alison Wilde
Hi Ella, it's really nice to see you here today, and congratulations on your new book in particular. Dr Ella Houston works as a senior lecturer at Liverpool Hope University, specialising in advertising and disability studies and teaching a lot of students across a range of disability studies topics, but I'll leave more introduction of herself to Ella. So thanks for coming today. It's really nice to see you, and I'd like to talk to you about your book and other related research. So first of all, then, could you tell us a bit more about yourself that I might have missed, and could you then tell us a little bit about your new book,
Ella Houston
Definitely, and thank you. It's a great privilege to be interviewed by you Alison. Advertising Disability is situated in cultural disability studies in particular, and this is very much aligned with my work. As you mentioned, I'm a senior lecturer in Disability Studies at Liverpool Hope University, and I'm also a core member of the Research Centre for Culture and Disability Studies, which is led by Professor David Bolt and located at Hope University. So my interests really are in cultural attitudes and cultural responses to disability. Now, one thing that I've noticed over the years is that advertising does not get as much attention in cultural disability studies in comparison to television, film, literary texts and so on. And Advertising Disability really tries to tackle this issue, because I would argue, and other scholars, for example, Professor Heller prominently, have argued that, you know, advertising is all around us. We can't escape the clutches of advertising if we're scrolling social media, if we're going shopping, if we're watching television and so on, if we're listening to the radio. So Advertising Disability really thinks about the impact over decades, and in fact, centuries, that advertisements, representations of disability in advertisements have had on public attitudes towards disabled people, and also how representations of disability in advertisements have impacted disabled people on more micro levels. So for example, I draw on the concept of psycho emotional disableism, drawing on the great professor, Carol Thomas, who was actually my PhD supervisor at Lancaster University, on her concept of psycho emotional disableism. I really believe that, due to the pervasive presence of advertising in society, that these portrayals can have profound influences on how disabled People feel about themselves and how they believe they're viewed and treated by other people in society.
Alison Wilde
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I completely agree with you, and I was so pleased when I learned quite a few years ago that you were studying on this topic up until then, I think, and you might be able to put me right. I think there was very, very little work, and I remember reading and being quite horrified about a chapter in Visual Culture by Jessica Evans on charity advertising and disabled people. As much as I like her work, I felt from that stage that, you know, there clearly needed to be disability or critical Disability Studies ethos injected into that, because otherwise we get this individualistic kind of perspective, which, again, as you just said, leaves us out. One thing that I'm really delighted about with your book is that you've got the voices of disabled people and disabled women in particular. So I wondered if you could say a little bit more about why you decided to do audience research and how that worked out and, and what you think of the place of audience research within that topic. How important is it?
Ella Houston
So for my PhD research, my topic focused on disabled women's responses through representations of disability and gender in different types of advertisements. So this is from charity advertisements to pharmaceutical advertisements, fashion and beauty advertising. And one thing I was fascinated by is the diversity of participant responses to these advertisements. So for example, I remember interviewing a group of women individually about representations of women with visual impairments in charity advertising. In particular, we talked about an advertisement produced by guide dog for the blind Association. And you know, in this advertisement, it focuses on a woman who identifies as blind a guide dog, jazz and her small children. And the ad is very much that jazz has, you know, changed her life, and that they can do these things as a family. Now, her little boy says jazz helps mum be mum. Now, some of the women that I interviewed were repulsed by this advertisement. They said, You know, first of all, it's this idea that, you know, a guide dog will help me fulfil motherly duties first and foremost. But like, that's the most important thing in my life. Some found it very patronizing, whereas others, you know, would say things like, first of all, oh, look cute puppies. You know, this is a really nice advert. Or, you know, I remember one woman saying to me she really liked that quote from the boy that jazz helps mum be mum, because, to her, that resembles how something like a guide dog, or, you know, some sort of accessibility aid, something as simple as that can provide quite a big difference. So that really got me fascinated by audience responses and how often the advertising industry will put out articles or have debates about, how do disabled people want to be represented like disabled people are a homogenous identity group who want the same. And actually it's so diverse. So honestly, I'm, I think, on a very simple level, I'm very interested in the diversity of disabled people's responses to advertisements. And I've always been fascinated by people's narratives, personal narratives as well. And I find that, for example, you know, in research interviews with disabled participants, representations of disability in advertisements can act as a fascinating prompt for discussion. You know, even in very abstract advertisement with just an image, no caption or no tagline, can prompt a lot of discussion, reflection on identity and personal stories. And one other thing that I should mention is that the book is part of the autocritical Disability Studies book series, which is led by Professor David Bolt, who I mentioned previously. And this book series, which has got a great selection of books in so includes books by my colleagues, Professor David Bolt, Dr Aaron Pritchard at Liverpool Hope University. The book has a profound interest in disabled people's experiences and how they inform Disability Studies inquiry from start to finish. So I was really pleased that advertising disability fits in very well with the remit of that book series,
Alison Wilde
Absolutely, and I think it's an exciting new development in that ever growing kind of range of disability perspective. So yeah, I'm following that with great interest. So thank you. That's a really comprehensive answer to my question. I've got another question about the book. I like the fact that there's some historical tracing in the book. And yeah, I'm particularly struck with that that that word advertisement, and so yeah, this idea of advertisement from the 18th century and everything. So I wondered if you could tell us a little bit about your opinions on how much the idea of the advertisement has changed. And I'm thinking, for example, given this isn't my area of study at all, when I think of recent what might be called progressive images of disabled women on advertisements, my mind immediately goes to the Maltesers ad, for example, and this kind of almost naughty image of disabled women. So, could you tell us something about what you think the progress from advertisements has been
Ella Houston
In the book, you know, I think about advertising and disability from the 18th century onwards. You know, the very first starting point was the complete absence of disabled people from advertising. And you might think, Oh, well, what have you got to say about that, seeing as though there were no images to speak about? Well, I think that speaks volumes in and of itself, advertising during the period of the industrial revolution in particular, really started to be a tool in society to sell images of success. You know, very capitalist images of success. People you know, moving to town from rural areas, and suddenly, you know, living in very densely populated areas became increasingly self conscious about the image that they were putting forward. And the idea that was sold is that image and first impressions are key to social and success in work spheres as well, so that so the fact that disabled people were completely emitted from these images of success and beauty and social cohesion in advertising speaks volumes about how they were, you know, beginning to be isolated, pushed to the margins in society. So then we think about how disabled people started to appear in advertising. And, you know, this idea, this concept of advertising I've got, unfortunately, I can't say that I coined that term, so that term was already used, but I think it really captures the, you know, pity theft, advertising that we so hate in disability studies, and that, have you know, really been fought against by the disabled people's movement for decades. So advertising, I would say, up until the 1980s disabled people were solely portrayed in charities advertisements. When you get to the 1980s you know, disabled people started to appear in mainstream adverts for companies like Levi's, McDonald's and so on, Budweiser as well. When I was researching for the book, I read a really interesting article that was talking about, not explicitly about disability, but about parity advertising in general, about how audiences are now moving towards wanting to see happy victims in quotes in advertisements. So, you know, people that the charity advertising industry is increasingly aware now that a lot of people experience gender fatigue, and so when you have the traditional advertising where it's all doom and gloom, can you help this person? You know, one pound a week can make their life less awful. This is what they're going through. For a lot of people that doesn't really work anymore, one because people are increasingly sceptical of charities and what they spend their money on, but also because these images of sadness are just so far removed from their own lives that they kind of switch off portrayals of disability and charity ads have been heavily criticized for very good reasons for many years. Now, the tide is changing, where you will often see now in advertisements, you know, narratives like, Oh, look at this disabled person living a great life. This is thanks to charity intervention. So you will see much more superficially positive images of disabled people in charity adverts. However, I still have you know a lot to say about these type of advertisements in the book. I think they continue to be, in the majority of instances, very patronizing, because they suggest that disabled people are living good lives because of charity intervention. They often promote very cliche messages, undermine disability activism and also, you know, can give a false sense of reassurance that now, well, disabled people have never had it better, you know. Look at this person. They're living their best life, you know. So we don't need to campaign for disabled people's rights anymore.
Alison Wilde
Yeah, that's a really good point, actually. And, I mean, there's so many questions coming from what you said. And, yeah, I can think of exceptions to that. And, and you're right. You don't, you don't want to completely say, well, it's fine, so why are you even advertising for it? But first of all, the exceptions, I've noticed recently that the I think there's dementia ads, which are really, really depressing. And of course, you know, coping with dementia for anybody is not easy, but that seems to be an exception, and I think MND as well, and those are often feature men as well. But what do you think about these exceptions? Then it really
Ella Houston
is a tricky debate to be had about charity advertising, because, I mean, so in the book, a key concept I work with is, you know, it was introduced by Professor David Mitchell and Dr Sharon Snyder, Neo liberal inclusionism, this idea that, you know, in recent years, particularly in very Neo liberal societies. On the surface, it does seem as though disabled people are living great lives, and especially capitalist industries, you know, advertising, commercial companies, educational institutions, workplaces, continue to pump out these ideas that, you know, we really care about diversity, and we care about promoting diversity. So on the surface of things, in advertisements, you know, it really does seem that diversity is being promoted now in charity advertisements. The thing is, in neoliberal societies, you know, charities are a necessity, because while the state isn't providing support for disabled people, charities act as a crook to provide support where the state won't. And so a lot of charities, you know, I do believe have, you know, good intentions or good aspirations, want to want to help people. And so they are very much driven by wanting to generate dramatic responses from audiences. So they will inevitably promote the more dramatized narratives. You know, you mentioned the dementia advertisements because in order to reach audiences, grab their attention, they believe that's what they need to do. However, a key point I make throughout the book is that often these narratives of disability, I draw on Professor David bolts work about meta narratives pride getting ridden. Meta narrative with disability, how they really clash and undermine they are not in sync in any way with activist camp narratives generated by disabled people and the disabled people's movement.
Alison Wilde
One thing that you've been just been referring to is, is what you've called in one of your articles, the commodification of disability. Is there any more that you'd like to say about that particular piece of work on the commodification of disability?
Ella Houston
The commodification of disability? Yeah, I think it's an interesting one, and it's multi layered. I mean, one of the points, the key arguments I make in the conclusion of the book is that there really is, you know, in terms of disability and advertising and the commodification of disability and diversity. So there also really is a hierarchy of disability that's going on here. And I'm not the first one to kind of make this point that, you know, I know, for example, that callers work as highlighted this that in advertising for years now, we've had, you know, a growing presence of disability. However, it tends to be confined to portrayal of people with mobility impairments and sensory impairments. And it's been argued that this is the case because if somebody has mobility impairments or sensory impairments, then you can have very obvious visual signifiers of disability, such as a white cane, for example, to signify that someone has visual impairments, or a wheelchair to signify that someone has mobility impairments. So there is a very selective commodification of disability. In the conclusion, I point out that in say, these fashion and beauty advertisements that make us think that these companies are, you know, paragons of inclusion, really championing disabled people and, you know, nowhere to be seen, or images of people with learning disabilities, apart from maybe the cutesy images as children with learning disabilities or, say, Down syndrome, you know, for some fashion companies, people with dwarfism, people who experience mental health issues, people who have chronic illnesses and so on. So that really ties into the notion of neoliberal inclusionism as well, the selective approach that's taken, we can never get away from the fact that the key fundamental purpose of advertising is to raise awareness of brands and is to promote profits for brands. So I suppose you can never get away from that commodification of disability.
Alison Wilde
I don't know if you agree, but I think there's a bit of paradox there, both for your work and for my work in different areas of media, but in the kind of drive within the disability movement itself is that we do want recognition, and we do want to be represented, but we're living in a capitalist society, and it almost seems that we can't avoid that commodification of disability. What do you think of that? Can we? Can we achieve these goals without commodification?
Ella Houston
I don't think so. No, sadly, I think it would be unrealistic if I if I said that we can although, I mean, a point I should raise is that I don't want it to come across as though I'm solely pessimistic about advertising. Actually, I hope anyone who reads the book would very much appreciate that in many ways, I'm quite optimistic about advertising and disability, and I think one of the key things is because advertisers do want to appeal. Talk to many different types of people. You know, the idea of it makes monetary sense for a brand and advertising agency to make one advertisement that appeals not just to a very select small audience, but to many different types of people. So I actually think that the aims of advertising reaching as many people as possible, reaching new audiences, which, of course, is tied into commodification, actually can be a real push and nudge for advertisers and to improve how they represent disabled people and across the years, you know, I mean, Paul longlaw has pointed out, you know, years ago, that advertisers have been ahead of the curve in terms of the media industries all representing disabled people, you know. So, for example, in the 1980s there was a Budweiser advertisement of a guy who uses a wheelchair, you know, very kind of extractive bit, you know, of models always are in alcohol advertisements, and he's like, pumping weights, and his girlfriend is watching him, then he hops in his wheelchair, and they go off together. You know, this is in the 1980s So advertisers really have been quite cool in many ways and how they've represented disability.
Alison Wilde
Yeah, it's good point. And I think one thing is, ostensibly, it's lot harder to avoid stereotypes because of the shortness of advertisements. In fact, not all of them are even have any length if they're just like visual representations. So in a way, that's even a harder task than, say, doing it in a soap opera. I think so. Yeah, lots of food for thought there. I think, by the way, I love the fact I think you're a little bit modest, but I love the fact that you continually referencing the way you've got your ideas from and I think we need a lot more of that, both in academia and in the movement. Actually, one thing I wanted to ask you about then, and I'm really glad that you see how the kind of the progress that's been made, and the importance to advertisers. I know that, alongside students, disabled people, that your book is, is also aimed at people. They have advertising industry, how do you think they could use your book to improve even further?
Ella Houston
My dream, like my ultimate goal, would be that if people in the advertising industry like read the book, and you know, I'm not deluded, I don't think many people in the industry would sit down to read the book in full. But you know, especially if I was talking to people about the book in the archetyping industry, one of the key messages that I want, but across, is that it's the complexity to appreciate the complexity, and sometimes it feels like a losing battle, because a lot of the time when I talk about my work to people in the industry. You know, one of the first questions will be, well, how do disabled people want to be represented? And you know, this is what I write about in the conclusion, because so often in academia as well. You know, one of the top pieces of advice for writing a conclusion is recommendations for future practice what we should do differently. But as you will know Alison, due to your work as well, and you know audience responses, very, very difficult to give recommendations for representations because of the diversity of audience responses. So I think a key thing would be appreciating that there is no kind of tried and tested formula for representing disabled people. I mean, an obvious one, you know. But it's not so obvious because it's very slow to kind of happen is that the advertising industry needs to employ more disabled people, you know. I mean, inclusion is only inclusion in name alone, if it's only down to representation, talking about referencing other people's work. Actually, Professor David Bolt has written about this in terms of, you know, ableist advertising. How, you know, advertisers will gain a lot of kudos, and brands will gain a lot of kudos for including disabled people in advertisements. But then one, you know, it's really problematic and very tokenistic if those advertisements have only been designed by non disabled people, the recipe for disaster. But also, you know, representation and name only occurs when you have advertisements that feature disabled people, but they don't have any accessibility. Thought for accessibility, you know, post captions, for example. Or, you know, David Bolt in his work, has talked about dove advertising in particular, that an advertisement that featured a woman with visual impairments and is getting ready to go out a friend, which is, you know, progress. They're great, but there's no point. Is there a voice over naming what the product you know advertised is, and so it's inaccessible to people visual impairments, yet it representing someone with visual impairments.
Alison Wilde
So in the production of that, you're talking about, basically 360, and you're talking about, for example, having disabled people involved in in the writing and design of the advert in the first place as well, because that's often missed out. Isn't it that huge focus on who's been represented on the screen? For example.
Ella Houston
I go beyond that as well, because my fear is that when I make recommendations like this. Sometimes advertising agencies will then, you know, have, they might have an employer, employee, sorry, who is disabled, and they then become the disability champion, you know. And it's kind of like they are the person then responsible, the token disabled person involved in the production of advertisements, you know, I would also say, I really think that the advertising industry needs to pay a lot more heed to the disabled people's movement. The advertising industry has often tried to say mimic or speak the language of women's liberation and Black Lives Matter, and sometimes that can be quite insulting when it's done in tokenistic ways. However, when it comes to disability, there barely seems to be any recognition whatsoever of disability activism or the label people's movement. And I think that's really poor.
Alison Wilde
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, I agree with you. Even if, even if, even in those occasions where they have disability programs on you might expect a bit of deliberate kind of advertising amongst those. So that brings me to another question, which is about the impact of of streaming, personally speaking as and where we I can I often watch things, not when they're on, but later, as many of us do, and we try to do it in a way that gets rid of the adverts. So how do you think this has changed? Changed things for us in in the value of using adverts and the way that the disability and impairment is represented on them. Has it changed things? If so, how?
Ella Houston
I think that's a really interesting question. And I must admit, I think most of us would say that if we're watching a film or a TV program and the advertising break comes on, you know, we're not, we kind of want to fast forward to watch the rest of the film or the TV program. I often feel a little bit guilty. I feel like I should always watch advertising breaks like it's field work for me. So I definitely think, you know, streaming and being able to go past advertising breaks, I would imagine, poses an issue to the advertising industry more broadly, you know, not least for you know, representations of disabled people and how, perhaps the power of TV advertising, representations of disabled people in TV advertising are losing their sway a bit because of streaming. However, with streaming, I think that you know social media advertising and online advertising has is exponentially growing. And this something that I really focus on in chapter six of the book, you know, so disabled social media influences. And it's an area of advertising which is really exciting, actually, and it is growing at a great speed, I think about disabled social media influencers. And you know how this presents an opportunity for disabled people to have more control than they ever had before in how they're represented in advertising? You know? Because the key thing is social media influencer advertising really depends on this notion of authenticity. You know, the idea is that social media influencers are the new generation of celebrities, and that, you know, in advertising, they play a really important role, because people are getting increasingly wary of advertising pictures, you know, so the idea that you follow, or you're a particular fan of an influencer, And then, you know, your say on TikTok or Instagram, and their posts happen to be sponsored by a brand, and they're working in partnership with an advertising agency, and people can trust those kind of sales pictures a lot more. And you know, one of those advertisements are particularly powerful because they work on that person's likability. You know, so often you'll find in these advertisements, rather than talking at length about the product or about the brand, actually, you know, the social media influencer will tell you a story about their life, or a day in the life of or let us talk about this to. Topic, and they'll make brief references to the product. So I think that this presents a lot of opportunities for disabled people to, you know, at the same time as that, they're working with a brand, so they're that they've got a platform in that sense, but they're also sharing first person accounts of disability while doing so. I mean, the caveat is, of course, there's always a caveat that these advertisements, you know, these posts that are, you know, part of paid sponsorship fields. Of course, they, they often are edited. I'm not naive. I know that. You know, social media influencers will say certain things that make them more marketable. You know that there might be quite a lot of influence from the brand or advertising agency. However, I do think they present quite exciting opportunities as well.
Alison Wilde
Very briefly, is there a platform that dominates then that's particularly good for advertising via social media and Instagram, perhaps, or TikTok?
Ella Houston
Well, I mean, I don't use Instagram, but I do use TikTok. So I suppose I would go more towards TikTok. I think TikTok is very interesting as well, because in terms of advertisements, advertisements are short and sweet. And obviously TikTok videos tend to be quite brief. And some people say, Well, you know, in these brief in a in 30 seconds, how on earth can you get across complex messages about disability? And that's a fair point, because, you know, before I've mentioned the importance of complexity. However, I think that in say, short TikTok videos, in short social media advertisements, you can get across quite powerful messages of disability that are entertaining but will also stick in people's minds. And another thing that I like about things like TikTok is that it's very easy for people say when they're making an advertisement or a TikTok video to add accessibility features that just closed captions. And I noticed that quite a lot of content creators do this, and maybe they're not necessarily thinking about accessibility. They're just doing it because it's a cool feature on the app, but it, you know, promotes accessibility.
Alison Wilde
I particularly love your paper on pharmaceutical industry and MS, so I wondered if you'd like to tell us a little bit about that paper before we close with some final comments. One thing you know, which theory often talks about is with the social model, where things that round very important concerns for a lot of us, around medication and things and round all the kind of social relationships around that, how that affects us as disabled people. So if you can say more about MS and the pharmaceutical industry, that'd be really useful. I think.
Ella Houston
Yeah. No, thank you. Alison, I really enjoyed writing the paper about, you know, portrayal of multiple sclerosis in direct to consumer pharmaceutical advertisements. I found it fascinating, because, as you mentioned previously, you know, trails of MS in charity advertisements, in pharmaceutical advertisements, the history is absolutely dire. Because the key message that would put across, and to be honest with you, this message is still promoted by, you know, the MS Society, for example, in some of its character impairments. I saw one that was released in recent years. I think it was, can't remember if it was the MS Society of New Zealand or America, but the image was of a person who was meant to be a hunter because they had, like, a long shotgun in their hand and their head was replaced by a, I think, a stag. So it's this idea that you know your body is literally turning on itself. So diabolical images of MS in charity advertisements and pharmaceutical advertisements. So when I set out to analyse very recent representations of MS in American Pharmaceutical advertisements. I was expecting quite a bleak picture. However, you know, what I've I found is that these images on the surface were incredibly positive. You know, you would have so there were images, mostly of young people with MS. And apart from in, you know, it's a small sample of advertisements that I analysed, but there was only one advertisement which had a visual symbol of MS and a young woman using gay a mobility cane. And of course, you know, I'm aware that there aren't always visual symbols of Ns, but I did find it interesting that there was only one slight symbol, um, but you know basically that the theme across the advertisements is that, you know, um, there are now therapies, drug therapies, that people take, you know, um. Once a day, or even once every couple of months, and get along with their lives and live happy, fulfilling lives. So that that message seems really great and very different to previous messages. However, there is a simplistic message, very subtle message that MS is, is kind of a hidden enemy that you know, MS is the underlying threat, the fulfilling lives, and that thanks to drug therapies, thanks to, you know, supposedly altruistic pharmaceutical companies, and you know, you can, with pharmaceutical intervention, keep that hidden enemy at bay. So I think that's really interesting. You know, in in recent years, definitely, we have these very happy, cheerful, you know, everybody's happy, everyone's great images of diversity, but disability is often seen as something that needs to be controlled and kept at bay in order to keep these narratives going.
Alison Wilde
Yeah, yeah, I agree with you completely. And if, if I had a pound for every person who's come up with that kind of you can fix yourself to, you know, not just pharmaceutical companies, but it leaks into everybody's attitudes, doesn't it? It's like, try vitamin B 12. It's like, it's just a question of management, take control of your body. So, yeah, I'm sure that applies to men, many disabled people, not just people with MS, go on, sorry, Ella,
Ella Houston
no, definitely, and sorry, when you said, Take control of your body, that that ignited a thought, you know. But I think that that really fits in with the aim of advertising, you know, the very capitalist agenda, because taking control is often equated with buying something, you know, whether it's buying makeup or whether it's buying drug therapy. And, of course, I mean to add insult to injury, you know, these pharmaceutical advertisements produced in America, you know, make it seem as though drug therapy is just changed somebody's life so easily. You know, we know here that these therapies can be incredibly expensive, not available to, you know, lots and lots of people. So again, it's a very selective, misleading lineage of success.
Alison Wilde
Yeah. Well, one thing I'd like to add, if it's all right, is I often reminds me just advertise, like the MS Society advertising, and the actual reality of what the MS Society do, some of what the MS Society do for disabled people, for people with MS is very, very different. So it often reminds me of when you see a trailer for a film like The Beatles, you trailer makes you look really tacky, and you think, I'm not going to see that. And you go, and you go, and most people go and sit and say, Oh, it was actually surprisingly good. And I had the same even though, you know, the question of charity is a hugely problematic one. It's like this kind of awful message that the MS Society now on the and the difference between the welfare services that they provide couldn't it couldn't be more different. So I think there's a huge gap there between the way things are advertised and what we actually get from them, not always positive either. I wondered if you could finish this with some kind of with some kind of look to the future in terms of what advertising could be doing better and why does disabled people fit within that? I get your message loud and clear that actually they've achieved quite a lot in a very short time, not least in in in actually getting more disabled women in advertising, which we know has been a problem throughout the representation of disabled people, but yeah, what could they do even better, and what should they avoid in the future? So that's kind of my final question, unless you want to say something about your future work as well.
Ella Houston
Thanks. Alison, I would say, in terms of what advertisers can do better, I'd say really simple point is try to avoid cliches. You know, I think that advertising can be replete with cliches. And I understand, you know, a lot of people think that advertising is, you know, base culture and, you know, well, it's designed to appeal to the masses. So it can be a bit mindless, but actually, advertisers have got an incredibly hard job. You know, it's very difficult to make advertisements that will appeal to masses of people, actually, that that's really hard, complex work, and so maybe, maybe then that that gives rise to cliches that will appear and tug on the heartstrings of lots of people, but I think avoid cliches about disability because they are incredibly patronizing and they will alienate and put a lot of disabled consumers off. I think one of the key ways that you can avoid cliches is by actually listening. And being led and steered by, you know, disabled people's opinions and voices the disabled people's movement, I think, as well, you know, a key thing about advertising is that it needs to at least give the impression of being authentic. You know, the authenticity factor is really important, so to be more aligned with disability activism. Type of things that disabled people are, you know, asking for, would really help with authenticity. Another thing I think, that you know, advertising really needs to think about accessibility. So I think if we truly are thinking about representation in an in depth and informed way, images of disabled people, you know, won't cut it. You know, you really need to think about making advertisements truly engaging for disabled people and disabled audiences. And another point I'd raise relates to the hierarchy. I think it's really insulting, and you know, runs the risk of pushing many disabled people even further into the margins, if you only have you know disabled people who are very visibly disabled you know, or say, for example, you tend to find an advertising you know somebody, people who perhaps use prosthetic limbs or mobility aids, or sensory aids that can almost be styled as fashion accessories. You know, actually, that that is a very selective, superficial representation of disability. So to challenge the hierarchy would be really important, I think, moving forward and in terms of how I would like my work to develop, I would definitely like to I really enjoy working with disabled participants and disabled audiences, and I'm fascinated by the different types of responses to advertisements. So I think the logical next step for me really would be to think about different types of advertising. I tend to think quite a bit about charity advertising, obviously, because it's played such a problematic role in attitudes towards disabled people over the years, pharmaceutical advertising, I've also thought about a chapter in the book focuses on controversial representations of disability and adverts so comedic representations or representations that are quite risky, and so I think that's something I'd like to think more about. I think for now, though, I just, I'm still enjoying the relief of having the book out there. It's It was very nice to finally hold a copy of it in my hands.
Alison Wilde
Yeah, can't wait to read it fully. It sounds absolutely fascinating. And I was going to say I was looking forward to this and that, but I'm looking forward to it all now. So yeah, thank you so much. I actually really, really want to talk to you about loads more things outside of this now, so maybe we can do that soon. But thank you very much, Ella.
Ella Houston
Thank you so much Alison, thank you all right. Thank you. Bye.
Outro
Thank you for listening. We do hope you've enjoyed this episode of Disability and… further episodes of disability and… can be found on the Disability Arts Online website at www.disabilityarts.online.