Disability inclusion is improving at agencies—but there’s still a ways to go

When his leg was amputated last year, Hugh Boyle, who had worked in advertising for more than 30 years at agencies like OgilvyAction and TracyLocke, said the industry’s accessibility issues became clear to him.

Suddenly, things like traveling, meeting clients, and working long hours, which had once been second nature, became obstacles.

Looking back, Boyle told us he had only worked with one person with a disability that he knew of in his career. When he met Bob Wagner, with whom he co-founded creative agency Doable this year, he learned that Wagner had hidden his congenital deafness for decades, out of fear it could hinder his career progression.

“Fast-forward to now, when we’re speaking to a lot of young people with disabilities, what’s really sad is they’re saying the same thing,” he told us. =

While agencies in recent years have openly supported causes like racial equality and LGBTQ+ inclusion, people who identify as disabled or neurodivergent told us they’ve historically felt overlooked or left out, despite their creative and economic contributions.

But the tide may be turning: Influencer agency Purple Goat formed in 2020 and Doable opened this summer, both with a mission to improve disability representation in campaigns and within agencies. Employees who identify as neurodivergent or disabled also told us that new roles and more flexibility at larger agencies are boosting inclusivity—but there’s still room for industrywide improvement.

Misrepresentation matters

In 2021, Nielsen research found that people with disabilities were largely absent from television advertising, suggesting that representation behind the scenes is lacking as well.

“Consumers with disabilities have a disposable income of nearly half a trillion dollars,” Boyle said. “When did the advertising industry ever ignore consumers with that much money to spend?”

When looking at how people with disabilities are portrayed in advertising, Boyle said there are two main archetypes: “superhuman” (like a Paralympian) or “subhuman” (like a person in a wheelchair in an ad to raise money for a hospital). “There’s nothing in between, but actually, life with a disability is everything in between,” he said.

Given that one in four Americans lives with a disability, per the CDC, Boyle said commercials showing families should include at least one person with a disability. “But you don’t need to point it out and say, ‘Look at this brave little soldier eating her breakfast.’”

One of Boyle’s goals at Dallas-based Doable, which has employed around 36 people with disabilities to date, is to give people who have never been able to work in the industry the opportunity to join it. “There’s no one better to build you an accessible website than someone who needs an accessible website,” he said.

Empowering the community

Dom Hyams, head of strategy at Purple Goat, said the agency’s goal is to improve representation on social media by connecting brands with disabled influencers. “It makes perfect sense to lean on the community to discuss narratives in and around disability,” he said. “It’s a no-brainer.”

Because more than half of Purple Goat’s staff—which consists of 18 full-time employees—is from the disability community, including himself, Hyams said clients get that “natural lived experience” and expertise that makes campaigns more authentic.

“If you see representation in the companies you work in, you’ll naturally get upskilled and educated around disability, and you’ll see that trickle down into more inclusive work,” he said.

This summer, Purple Goat worked with Heineken-owned Strongbow on a Pride event where British Sign Language interpreters were present, and the brand is working with the agency on other initiatives to help its campaigns become more accessible and inclusive.

During the Olympics and Paralympics in 2021, Purple Goat partnered with Virgin Media on a campaign featuring 16 influencers with a range of impairments and disabilities.

Barriers to entry

A few of the bigger holding company agencies have taken steps to become more inclusive of the disabled community as well.

In 2019, Wunderman Thompson established its Inclusive Experience Practice, a hub within the agency that’s worked with brands like Unilever and Tommy Hilfiger.

Josh Loebner, global head of inclusive design at Wunderman Thompson, told us that agencies creating “departments or teams focusing on accessibility and disability inclusion” is a way to both recognize consumers with disabilities and create a “gateway for people with disabilities to move down the path of gainful employment” in order to address their “significant amount of underemployment” in advertising.

In addition to employee resource groups, Loebner said agencies should aim to create an environment where prospective employees feel safe identifying as part of the disability community or “highlighting reasonable accommodations that they may need” to succeed in their job.

“I wouldn’t be able to be in the role that I have today if it wasn’t for reasonable accommodations, hybrid, and working remotely,” he said.

In campaign work, he said it’s also important for agencies to ensure things like production shoots are accessible and clients are thinking about inclusion consistently, not just in one-off campaigns. “I’m blind and disabled every single day of the year, so hopefully brands recognize that inclusive design and accessibility and disability representation are things that I want to see regularly and repeatedly,” he said.

Rachel Lowenstein, global head of innovation inclusion at Mindshare, works to integrate neuroinclusivity into everything from brand strategies (like the #AutisticOutLoud campaign with Hiki and Getty Images) to thought leadership as part of her practice. Lowenstein, who was diagnosed as autistic a few years ago, said having the flexibility to work one-on-one or with more quiet thinking time, compared to the industry standard of larger brainstorms, has been crucial for her, as has being able to work remotely when needed.

“I think far too often, leaders don’t ask the question, ‘How do you work best?’” she said, later adding that “the biggest barrier right now is creating new ways of working,” whether in individual working styles, hiring practices, or leadership training. “There needs to be those broad industry shifts to be able to get more disabled talent into the pipeline.”

Where we go from here

Both Loebner and Lowenstein noted that their roles and practices didn’t exist even a few years ago, signaling a positive shift in the agency world.

“Many years ago, when disability was a topic within advertising, the only consideration was the creative and not the creators,” Loebner said, citing a rise in executive roles focused on inclusivity, as well as creators identifying as disabled, which he called “truly exciting.”

Lowenstein shared that one of her followers told her they sought an autism assessment after seeing her posts on social media and relating to them.

“I bring up that story because I think brands often overlook the importance of creating visibility for disabled people,” she said. “Include us in your ads, work with disabled creators, ensure your agency has disabled talent. All of that is so important, because the visibility is still so lacking…and that needs to be brought into the mainstream.”