Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly - Yes I Can: Marketing to People with Disabilities

Episode Date: June 7, 2025

This week, we explore how advertisers market to people with disabilities. Disabled people are usually ignored in advertising campaigns. Yet people with disabilities control half a trillion dollars in spending money.We’ll look at four powerful campaigns that not only feature people with disabilities, but these commercials are disrupting the public’s negative perceptions of the disabled.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Did you know that if you subscribe to our But Wait There's More option, you get a bonus story in every episode of Under the Influence. But wait, there's more! For the price of a cup of coffee every month, you get early access so you'll hear every episode a full week before everybody else. Plus, you enjoy that episode ad-free. Tsk tsk. And by subscribing, you support our podcast.

Just go to Apple Podcasts and subscribe to Under the Influences, but wait, there's more. When does fast grocery delivery through Instacart matter most? When your famous grainy mustard potato salad isn't so famous without the grainy mustard. When the barbecue's lit but there's nothing to grill. When the in-laws decide that actually they will stay for dinner. Instacart has all your groceries covered this summer, so download the app and get delivery in as fast as 60 minutes. Plus, enjoy zero dollar delivery fees on your first three orders,

service fees, exclusions, and terms apply. Instacart, groceries that over-deliver. I'm a big book reader and love to read about interesting destinations. But here's an idea, why not pack a book and actually book a vacation to an interesting destination. The folks at Sell-Off Vacations can help make that happen. And here's the great thing about them.

They've been booking vacations for over 30 years and you want that in a travel expert. And they not only offer sun packages and flights and cruises and hotels, Sell-Off Vacations also offers you something called their best price promise, which means they will not only match a competitor's price, they'll beat it. Now whether you want to see a new corner of this great country, and a lot of people are doing that this year, or if you want to head off to the Mediterranean or other parts of Europe or the Caribbean, there are options for every budget. And sell off vacation experts know these travel destinations because they've been there. And again,off vacation experts know these travel destinations because they've been there.

And again, you want that in a travel expert. They've done their homework. And here's the other thing. Sell-off Vacations is based here in Canada. Canadians helping Canadians enjoy affordable getaways. So book your next vacation with selloffvacations.com. And happy travels. And happy travels.

Here's a question. How can you support Canada while you sleep? Well, you can do it by sleeping on a Douglas mattress, the mattress designed and manufactured right here in Canada. Douglas mattresses start at just $599 and come with a free comfort sleep bundle which includes two memory foam pillows, a waterproof mattress protector and an entire cotton sheet set. And how's this for risk-free Canadian convenience? You can enjoy a Douglas mattress for a 365 night in-home trial.

You don't love it. Douglas will pick up the mattress for free, donate it to a local charity and refund you in full. No hassle, no risk. Douglas has been named Canada's best mattress by Canadian living and is loved by 250,000 sound sleepers like me. Don't wait! Visit Douglas.ca slash under the influence to claim this exclusive offer for Canadian listeners with free shipping. Sleep better knowing your mattress is made in Canada. Douglas mattress, Canada's best mattress. This is an Apostrophe Podcast Production. That's a spicy meatball. What love doesn't conquer Alka Seltzer will

You're under the influence with Terry O'Reilly Have you ever heard of the curb cut effect? It's a phenomenon where accessibility features originally designed for people with disabilities unexpectedly benefit the broader population. The term curb cut effect specifically refers to gently sloping curbs on sidewalks that allow people to transition from the sidewalk to the street without tripping. Those curb cuts, which are now found at virtually every street corner and driveway, were originally designed to help people in wheelchairs and walkers.

Before curb cuts, a six-inch curb felt like Mount Everest to people with disabilities. But curb cuts weren't the only disability innovation we all now enjoy in our lives. Back in the early 20th century, people with motor skill disabilities had a very difficult time doing simple things, like brushing their teeth. So in 1954, the Broxodent electric toothbrush was invented to help people with limited strength brush their teeth. Today, most of us use electric toothbrushes. And in 2019, scientists found that people who use an electric toothbrush have healthier

gums, less tooth decay, and keep their teeth longer than those who use a manual toothbrush. So if you have some gleaming chompers, you can thank people with disabilities. If you've ever enjoyed an audiobook, you can thank the Foundation for the Blind. Back in 1932, the Foundation began recording books on vinyl records so blind people could listen as an option to using Braille. As technology advanced, it went to tape, then CDs, and now you can store hundreds of hours of audiobooks on your smartphone. Last year, the global audiobook market was worth around $8 billion. Many inventions we now enjoy were created by disabled people.

Ralph Teter lost his sight at the age of five due to an accident. One day in 1936, Teter was riding in a car with his lawyer, who had an irritating habit of accelerating and decelerating abruptly while talking. So Teeter later developed a device to maintain a car's speed without having to put your foot on the accelerator. So if you've ever cruised down the highway using cruise control, you can thank Ralph Teeter. In the early 1970s, the National Bureau of Standards in the U.S. began experimenting with closed captioning. It placed a hidden timecode on an unused part of the television signal.

While it wasn't available to the public yet, it opened the door to the idea of sending captions to those with hearing impairments. In 1971, ABC began experimenting with transmitting captions and at a national conference on television for the hearing impaired, ABC showed a captioned episode of the Mod Squad TV series for the first time. Nine years later, ABC, NBC, and PBS transmitted

closed captions on select programs, and decoders went on sale to the public. Then in 1990, a bill was signed that required all television sets to have the built-in capability for displaying closed captions. It was a milestone for deaf people. And by the way, Netflix recently discovered that 40% of its viewers use closed captioning all the time

and 80% of its viewers use closed captioning at least once a month. So if you've ever switched on closed captioning to hear mumbling actors or characters with pronounced accents, you can thank people with hearing disabilities. ["The Voice of the World"] People with disabilities make up a large swath

of the population. They are a segment that has historically been ignored by marketers. But lately, some very smart advertisers have begun to include people with disabilities in their commercials. It's good business, because disabled people have trillions of dollars to spend. And many of these commercials are also aimed at non-disabled people. The goal? To disrupt their perceptions.

You're under the influence. Here are some interesting facts about the spending power of people with disabilities. Around 26% of the population over the age of 15 lives with at least one disability. That means 8 million people in Canada and 56 million Americans. The purchasing power of the disabled population in Canada is $55 billion. The purchasing power of American people with disabilities is $490 billion. And here's the thing. Disabled people are only represented in 1% of commercials. Question. Disabled people are only represented in 1% of commercials.

Question. What smart advertiser would overlook a market worth over half a trillion dollars? Answer. Most advertisers. Including people with disabilities in advertising isn't just a moral imperative, it's a business imperative too. Let's talk about the moral imperative first. Just over 25% of the population of North America lives with at least one disability. Yet, they never see themselves reflected in commercials.

You may think seeing people with various disabilities in commercials is just a money grab or it's a company being too woke. But it's not. When disabled people appear in commercials, they feel seen, a valued part of the population. I saw a TikTok video recently of an eight-year-old boy in a wheelchair. He was with his parents in Walmart. The little boy was looking up at an in-store banner and couldn't believe his eyes. The boy in the banner was also in a wheelchair, and the ad wasn't for wheelchairs.

It was just a regular ad for Walmart. But instead of being happy watching that little boy in the wheelchair point so excitedly at the poster, it was kind of heartbreaking. He was so excited because he had never seen someone like him in an ad before. The business imperative is obvious. There is half a trillion disposable spending dollars out there in the pockets of people with disabilities. Globally, it nears $18 trillion.

According to research, 73% of people with disabilities are the head of the household and 48% are the principal shoppers. And people with disabilities show strong brand loyalty towards companies and products that exhibit the disabled in their marketing or are affiliated with disabled causes. Apple has done some excellent work around disability in both its products and its advertising. It has a long-running campaign where people shoot Apple commercials on their iPhones.

It's a way to demonstrate the broadcast quality of the iPhone camera and how easy it is to use. Recently, Apple launched two new shot-on-iPhone commercials featuring creators with disabilities. In this video, we watch a blind photographer. For my photography, it tends to represent how I see visually because I'm 95% blind and I have a small window sight in the middle. Just lay your chin down for me, tap, take picture.

Speaking to the phone, quite surprised and got to a point where I wasn't actually using my fingers anymore. It's quite bright. It helps the next generation of photographers to actually think, you know what, if this guy is doing it, I'm gonna pick up the camera and have a go myself. My name's Ian Traherne,

and I'm a professional vision-pair photographer. By using Apple's accessibility features, Traherne takes remarkable photos. He's even got a fascinating TED talk about his career. ["Piano Music"] In another 4-minute Apple video, 8 athletes, 4 with disabilities and 4 without, compete side by side in a 4-stage relay race. The athletes with disabilities include a cyclist with an upper limb difference, a wheelchair racer, a low vision swimmer,

and a blade runner. The video shows all eight of the athletes using Apple devices in their daily routines. The only difference being the athletes with disabilities use Apple's accessibility features to navigate their training and their lives. As we watch the training footage, all eight athletes show the training footage,

all eight athletes show the same grit, sweat, determination, and sacrifice. Then comes race day. The first stage is a 400 meter sprint on the track between a runner and a blade runner. Then a 500 meter cycle race between a cyclist and a cyclist with an upper limb difference. Then, a 50 meter freestyle swim between a swimmer and a visually impaired swimmer,

finishing back at the track with a 400 meter finale between a runner and a wheelchair racer. Set. And they're off. It's a remarkable race to watch. In each of the events, the athletes with disabilities are slightly behind at the beginning of the events. Then, they start to gain on the non-disabled athletes. Soon, they were neck and neck. As we see them racing, we hear a voiceover

from each of the athletes with disabilities. As a kid, all I wanted was to run and race, just like my friends. I was never told, you can't do this, you can't do that. There's no difference between me and any other swimmer. When I get in the water, I want to win. When I am racing, I feel free. I feel powerful. The truck makes everyone equal. In each of the races, the athletes all cross the finish line at roughly the same time. We lined up at the same line and we finished at the same line.

It was just a matter of who got there first. It's an amazing film to watch, and you can see it on YouTube by searching Apple Relay Race. The interesting thing about Apple's accessibility advertising is that it doesn't just show people with disabilities doing extraordinary things. It also features them doing everyday average things.

features them doing everyday average things. I am the greatest. I said that to you before I knew I was. In another video titled The Greatest, a photographer with paralysis uses his voice to issue commands on his iPhone camera and later uses facial expressions on his Apple computer when formatting his photos. A scrunched nose tells the computer to pinch the picture.

His raised eyebrows expands the photo. A blind pianist uses the accessibility features on his iPhone to identify objects, even helping him find the stage door at a theater. Two doors detected. Text to stage. Door four feet away. And we see a deaf mother wearing an Apple watch that alerts her when her baby is crying. The entire video is set to music featuring Muhammad Ali's famous line, I shook the world.

What are we gonna do? We're gonna dance. What are we gonna do? We're gonna dance. What are we gonna do? We're gonna dance. The video garnered 16 million views in its first week on YouTube and won all the top trophies at advertising award shows. I shook the world. It is utterly inspiring. Unilever has launched an initiative that is a little different from Apple.

It is boosting the number of people with disabilities behind the scenes in its advertising production crews. The initiative is called Believe in Talent. Advertising is a gigantic industry, but was not really fit to accommodate people with disabilities. This initiative was to challenge harmful stereotypes that marginalized disabled communities.

People with disabilities were put behind the camera, on the sets of the commercial shoots, and were incorporated into the post-production editing process. What did Unilever discover? Its chief brand officer said that disabled talent had phenomenal skills and creativity and produced outstanding content. Unilever has also produced an inclusive production toolkit to advise

ad agencies how to include and support those with disabilities. The point wasn't just to get brownie points for including disabled creators, but rather to be more successful by doing it. When we return, an ad writer comes up with a selfish idea that helps people around the world. El Dar Yousupov is a 32-year-old man with cerebral palsy. Despite his disability, he is a fully functioning human, except at home.

I'll let Eldar explain it himself. Hi, I'm Eldar, 32 years old. Although I have cerebral palsy, I do everything I can to conduct myself like everyone else. But in my own home, of all places, I'm surrounded with furniture crying out, Cripple. I'd like to sit on a regular sofa without being afraid I won't be able to get up, to open regular closet, or even to turn on a regular lamp.

Eldar's own home is one of his biggest challenges. He also happens to be an ad writer at the McCann advertising agency in Tel Aviv and works on the IKEA account there. He came up with what he called a very selfish idea. He suggested IKEA make small changes to its furniture to help disabled people. But that wasn't so easy. IKEA is a global company with thousands of products. Redesigning those products in hundreds of stores was an impossible task. IKEA said the idea was admirable, but it was too complicated.

It was never going to happen. So the advertising agency teamed up with two NGOs that specialized in creating products for people with disabilities, and together they came up with a number of add-on items that could be attached to existing IKEA products without having to alter the existing furniture. These add-ons were all designed to help people with disabilities use the furniture. For example, they created elevated legs that could be attached to sofas that allowed people like Eldar to get up off the sofa with confidence, enlarged overlay buttons on lamps for easier

access, and large rings that can be attached to pillow and duvet zippers to allow for easy grabbing. The advertising agency also decided to create a room that showcased these add-ons as if these products already existed in IKEA. Then they invited the IKEA CEO to see the room. After six never going to happen meetings, the CEO looked at all the amazing add-on solutions and said,

oh my God, this is going to happen. With that good news, Eldar suggested a hackathon. So IKEA invited its engineers and people with disabilities to a seven day hackathon workshop. Together, they looked at the furniture pieces and talked about the ways people with disabilities struggle with them. Then the engineers gathered all the information,

went away, and instead of redesigning their furniture worldwide, they instead developed 13 new products that could be attached to the existing furniture. And each new product solved a disability issue. Like special handles for cabinets that are easier to grasp, hooks that could be clipped to bed frames so people could rest their canes beside them

for instant access, and gripper handles for shower curtains. All simple ideas that were smart, safe, and affordable. IKEA Tel Aviv then began manufacturing the new add-on items for the disabled. The project was called This Ables. The products were also made available on a thisables.com website, and each product could be created with 3D printing so anyone in the world could access them. There is also a section of Disabled.com where people with disabilities can point out a need

and IKEA will try and come up with a solution. People from 150 countries visited the website, even from countries that don't have IKEA stores. Then IKEA created the world's first accessible living spaces in their stores, showcasing the add-on products attached to their regular furniture. The new products allowed people with disabilities to buy the same furniture as everyone else, but with the add-on accessories that made them work in their everyday lives. In Israel, where this project originated, 10% of the population have disabilities, which translated into 900,000 people. Therefore, IKEA discovered an entirely new market.

IKEA discovered an entirely new market. There was a 37% sales increase of products with these add-ons and revenue increased 33%. As for Eldar, little did he know his selfish idea would help people worldwide. And at the Cannes International Advertising Festival that year, where the advertising world comes to compete, Eldar and his colleagues were called to the stage and given the Grand Prix trophy. It is the

highest award given out to an advertising agency at the most prestigious ad award show in the world. When we come back, one of the most famous disability advertising campaigns in history. Perhaps the most famous advertising campaign showcasing the amazing abilities of people with disabilities was for the Paralympics in 2012. It was produced by Channel 4 in the UK and was titled We're the Superhumans. The commercial focused on the disabled athletes as they trained, the obstacles they had to overcome, and how they competed.

they had to overcome and how they competed. The commercial was set to the public enemy song, Harder Than You Think. The ad told you to forget about everything you thought you knew about strength, and to forget everything you thought you knew about humans, and introduced you to the super humans. Thank you for letting us be ourselves. So don't mind me if I repeat myself. This incredible commercial showed athletes

with disabilities training with grit and determination from one-legged high jumpers to wheelchair basketball teams, to Blade runners. The ad even dared to show moments of how some became disabled, either through birth, car accident, or war. The commercial was honest, powerful, and inspiring. Words on the screen said, It's time to do battle.

The moment this commercial reached the public, it gave Channel 4 in the UK its highest ratings in a decade and some of the highest in its history. Every four years, the Superhuman campaign is refreshed. For the 2016 Paralympic Games in Rio, 140 athletes with disabilities were featured in a campaign titled Yes I Can. That drum intro, by the way, was played by a drummer with no arms. He just used his feet. Then the orchestra kicks in, and all the players are musicians with disabilities, including

the singer in a wheelchair. Then we see the athletes. While the commercials showed disabled athletes training and competing, it also showed people with disabilities doing everyday things like brushing their teeth, playing with their children, driving a car and tap dancing with prosthetic legs. Posters went up with lines like, It's rude not to stare. And the celebratory and provocative, To be a Paralympian, There's got to be something wrong with you.

I can climb Everest. Yes, I can. The 2016 Paralympics in Rio smashed all TV viewing records. The uptick was monumental. It wasn't just a global sporting event, it was a social movement. The campaign not only changed perceptions

around the Paralympic Games, it disrupted public opinion on the representation of people with disabilities in the media. Four out of five people said their attitude towards disabled people had changed for the better. The press called the games breathtaking and hugely influential. The 2020 Paralympics in Tokyo was viewed by a global TV audience of 4.2 billion. During the 2024 Paralympics in Paris, that number increased by 40%.

People weren't tuning in to watch disabilities. They were tuning in to watch extraordinary athleticism. It showed the world that the athlete's abilities were stronger than their disabilities. When people with disabilities do not see people that look and sound like them in the media, or even in advertising, they are subconsciously told that they do not fit and do not matter. Recent research stated that only 1% of primetime commercials feature disability-related themes or visuals. Most advertisers don't think to include people with disabilities in their ads, or if they do, they're afraid of getting it wrong, so they don't do it.

But the more the advertising industry chooses to do it, the more everyday those images will become. And that's a good thing. Advertising agencies need to be more open to hiring people with disabilities. The reason McCann Tel Aviv hired Eldar wasn't because he has a disability, they hired him because he's brilliant. The disability insight he has is just an added benefit. When it comes right down to it, disability is not a limitation, but a unique aspect of human diversity.

Then there's the marketing reality. The number of people with disabilities around the world is greater than the population of China. Together, they have over $18 trillion to spend. To ignore them is just bad business when you're under the influence. I'm Terry O'Reilly. ["The Daily Show Theme"]

This episode was recorded in the TearStream Mobile Recording Studio. Producer Debbie O'Reilly. Chief Sound Engineer Jeff Devine. Under the influence theme by Casey Pick, Jeremiah Pick, and James Aitin. Tunes provided by APM Music. Follow me at TerryOInfluence. This podcast is powered by Acast. See you next week. In 1963, Stevie was just 13 years old at the time. I'm a big book reader and love to read about interesting destinations. But here's an idea.

Why not pack a book and actually book a vacation to an interesting destination? The folks at Sell-Off Vacations can help make that happen. And here's the great thing about them. They've been booking vacations for over 30 years and you want that in a travel expert. And they not only offer sun packages and flights and cruises and hotels, Sell-Off Vacations also offers you something called their best price promise, which means they will not only match a competitor's price they'll beat it. Now whether you want to see a new corner of this great country and a lot of people are doing that this year or if you want to head off to the

Mediterranean or other parts of Europe or the Caribbean there are options for every budget and sell-off vacation experts know these travel destinations because they've been there. And again, you want that in a travel expert. They've done their homework. And here's the other thing. Sell-off Vacations is based here in Canada. Canadians helping Canadians enjoy affordable getaways. So book your next vacation with selloffvacations.com.

And happy travels!