In late March, a TikTok video by @ezbruhhspinz showed a small boy in his ultralightweight wheelchair pointing to a poster in a Target store. “There’s a girl in a wheelchair, just like me!” he says of the poster’s artwork.
The video racked up 26.7 million views. Maybe it also sparked conversations on how important it is for people with disabilities to see themselves featured in all sorts of media.
In an October 2022 Center for Scholars & Storytellers @UCLA article — “The Case for Authentic Disability Representation in the Media and Why Our Society Desperately Needs It” — Sheena Brevig wrote, “Disability representation lags far behind every other marginalized group. In the U.S. today, one in four people (26%) has a disability, and yet only 3.1% of characters on screen are disabled. In children’s television, representation is even worse — less than 1%.
“Media tends to reflect our society’s values, so more importantly, above everything — the lack of visibility all around is killing disabled people.”
Brevig, whose brother has cerebral palsy, said media can provide exposure and advance understanding of disabilities via “authentic representation.”
“Media can make a difference by helping to normalize disability and expose people, disabled and able bodies alike, to disabled characters they can admire and relate to,” she said.
Staring at sunsets and staircases
In the early 2000s, Mobility Management did our own photo shoots and, when we had to use other imagery, depended on creative brilliance by Art Director Dave Druse. For a “Dude, Where’s My Chair?” story on adolescent mobility, we borrowed a personal photo of a young man in a power chair. Dave erased the power chair, then added a dotted line around the empty space.
Publishers and other businesses in need of imagery began to lean heavily on stock photos as collections became more robust. After all, photo shoots are expensive, time consuming, and at the whims of weather and 4-year-old models not always ready for their close-ups.
But what has been a resource to other publications has been immensely frustrating to us. Stock photo collections are filled with (fake) wheelchair riders in rented wheelchairs gazing sadly at a sunrise or morosely at a set of stairs. Or the opposite: (fake) wheelchair riders raising their arms in triumph while gazing at a sunrise.
“Pretty sure real wheelchair riders do more than look at sunrises,” I’d mutter to Dave.
Authentic representation in professional settings
On May 6, Getty Images — one of the premier stock photo collections — announced it had partnered with the National Disability Leadership Alliance to award a $20,000 grant “aimed at advancing authentic representation of the disability community in professional settings.”
According to its VisualGPS research, Getty Images said 71% of global consumers “want to see people with disabilities represented in everyday social and professional settings. Yet currently, the majority of visuals — three out of four — depict people with disabilities primarily in health-care environments. This highlights a meaningful opportunity to expand how disability is portrayed in visual content.”
The three winners are Elizabeth Rajchart, honored for her project “Scene Change: Disability in Media”; Nasreen Alkhateeb and her winning project “Reframing Us”; and Charmaine Chitale, whose project “unaltered.unfiltered” examines inclusion and exclusion in professional life in Zimbabwe.
Among this year’s judges was Maria Town, president/CEO of the American Association of People with Disabilities.
“We’re honored to elevate these visionary creators who are transforming the visual language around disability,” said Rebecca Swift, Ph.D., senior vice president of creative at Getty Images. “Through their work, they are not just capturing images — they’re building a world where everyone can see themselves visualized.”
I look forward to stock photo collections that depict real wheelchair riders eating pizza. Planting gardens. Leading boardrooms. Walking dogs. Dancing. Dealing with flat tires or a cranky toddler.
These are the moments — some glamorous, some less so — that make up full, glorious, unpredictable lives. Photographers: Let’s see ‘em.
