When’s the last time you switched on the TV to see a person in a wheelchair selling you laundry detergent?
Olan Farnall, a professor of advertising at Texas Tech, recently published a study stating only 2.5 to 3 percent of all aired commercials feature characters with disabilities.
The study, titled “Where Have All the Wheelchairs Gone?” finds that although characters with physical disabilities appeared 200 times more often in 2009 than they did in 1999, those numbers still do not accurately represent the 20 percent of Americans living with a disability.
“It’s still saying we are a much more modern society and we are a much more open society,” Farnall said in a news release, “but for some reason, we still don’t want to put images of disabilities in our advertising.”
Farnall’s research focused on disabilities that were physically obvious, such as people using wheelchairs, missing limbs or living with Down’s syndrome.
Reasons as to why advertisers are reluctant to use disabled people in their ads vary, Farnall said, but in the past, it had to do with audience expectations.
“Most of the time it was accredited to the fact that individuals, not disabled individuals, were uncomfortable with how to react,” he said. “How do you respond in an appropriate manner? Uncomfortableness was not something the entertainment industry was going for.”
After the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990, consumers’ attitudes toward those with disabilities softened. These days, while still uncommon, large corporations such as Target, McDonald’s and Home Depot are more likely to use a person with a disability in an advertisement, Farnall said.
“It would be hard to say the media was driving that, because again, all the content analysis studies that have looked at amount of portrayals still showed the amount as minute,” he said. “What the media is very good at is the media began to portray these individuals not necessarily as heroes but as humans.”
This, agreed Kristen Jones, training and technical support specialist with Disability Rights Texas, is critical to changing the public’s attitudes toward people with disabilities.
“There’s still a perception that people with disabilities need to be cared for,” said Jones, who uses a wheelchair. “I think (the media) not only changes attitudes of people without disabilities, but it also helps change attitudes for people with disabilities. In the past, they’ve been shut away or told they couldn’t do something.”
For this reason, Jones said, it’s important to note not only the number of times people with disabilities appear in advertisements or television shows, but also the actors portraying them.
Jones said she would like to see more actors with disabilities in roles, instead of actors acting like they have a disability.
“In a way, it does kind of bother me a little bit. I think there are plenty of capable actors and actresses and what have you that have disabilities that probably could better represent the community by using their talents versus having a non-disabled actor portray a person with disabilities,” she said.
In Jones’ experience, people with disabilities have a better chance of appearing in print media than television. She pointed to an example from fashion retailer
Nordstrom, in which a woman in a wheelchair models a pair of boots.
According to The Associated Press, Nordstrom has been using professional models with disabilities in ads and catalogs since 1997.
Despite the strides, Farnall said there are several areas needing improvement. During sweeps period, in which networks compete intensely for ratings, commercials featuring people with disabilities drop to practically zero.
Follow Blake on Twitter