251: A Realistic Picture of Disability Rights and Inclusion in Media and Marketing with Kelsey Lindell

It's been over 30 years since the American with Disabilities Act was implemented , yet there are still barriers to inclusivity that persist , particularly for the celebrities and the noncelebs , the hoi poloi , just like you and me , who bear the weight of public scrutiny as it relates to their disabilities .

Today , let's explore that unsettling issue of when we're not being inclusive to a marginalized group not that many people think about With my guest , kelsey Lindell , who is a physically disabled woman who is on a mission to educate 1 million people about disability rights and ableism this year . Take a listen , kelsey .

I'm so happy to speak with you today on a very important topic that also happens to be your passion . Welcome to the podcast .

So we're definitely going to get into that , but before we do , could you just tell the listeners a little bit about yourself ?

I've worked for big companies , I've worked for production studio , where I'm at right now , and time and time again I would see well-intentioned leaders and marketers trying to include people with disabilities or trying to just be inclusive but overlooking disability , and they had no idea that some of the things that they were doing are saying were problematic .

So I started Misfit Media . Misfit Media is a disabled led and run creative agency . So all of our people have disabilities , have lived experience with disability , have expressed peace in disability , but also have decades of creative experience . So we focus on three different areas in our business education , consulting and creative .

So a lot of our workshop , a lot of our work , is doing workshops , whether that's the spoke workshops , where we come into your place of work and do them , or if it's on demand and you stream them . We're really passionate about educating marketers so that they don't need us to do every single thing for them .

They don't need us to hold their hand every step of the way .

And then we expand that within Misfit to include neurodivergent diagnosis , which is a newer term that talks , refers to basically just a variation of how someone's brain works . So autism is a part of neurodiversity , so is ADHD , so is dyslexia , so is Tourette .

So those are also underneath the disability umbrella , but they weren't traditionally , because when the ADA defined disability those terms didn't exist yet .

I can't walk half the time anymore , so that's definitely disability . It's getting in the way of multiple major life activities . And then I also have a traumatic brain injury . I was going for a walk a few years ago and a car came and hit me , and so I have a permanent traumatic brain injury .

And so one thing we also talk about a lot is that disability is the only marginalized community that anyone can join at any time .

And the Center for storytellers and scholars , which is this organization that does great work that really like looks at narrative , identifies that 80% of this very small amount of representation is problematic . So the first thing is that they they don't do it .

They oftentimes this could be too implicit bias they think that disability is rare or it's not that common because they don't see it around them . Very often , like we talked about , not all disabilities are visible , so they think it doesn't really matter that much , it's fine .

The other reason that they often overlook this is they think that disabled people don't have that big of a buying power , and that's simply not true , you know , because there are things like social security insurance , which is horrendous .

The amount , the max you can get off social and social Social security insurance , which is basically payment from the government to survive if you absolutely cannot work , is $700 a month . Of course , that is a very , very low income the same .

Oftentimes those people do have other caretakers or providers that are helping support them , though they will purchase some things like it . Maybe they're not gonna purchase a luxurious vacation , but they'll purchase toilet paper and they'll purchase their basic needs at Target . You know like there are things that disabled people still buy .

And the other thing that we talked about is 40% of Families have at least one person with a disability in them , right ? So my husband Didn't really think twice about disability inclusion until he met me , because he didn't know anybody that was close to him and his family that had one .

Now that , now that we're married and he sees how much disability affects my life and how certain products are just inaccessible for me , he will always purchase from the company that does value disability inclusion that we've seen .

And one thing that we see a lot is that we know that 90% of consumers will switch to a brand that prioritizes disability inclusion if it's like basically the same product . So there's two . Let's use the toilet paper example again .

There's two different types of toilet paper and one has like an ad that they see that has Disabled people in it , and somebody who's a parent to some of the disability in it sees it , there's a 90% chance they're gonna switch over if they don't have loyalty to the other brand .

But my recently , my son , was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes . You know , he's , you know , been living with it for three years . He's 18 years old now and , as his mother , like his full-time caregiver in this , we're kind of in it together .

Boy , do I notice every time I see someone with an insulin pump , whether it's in the media , whether it's in Entertainment , if I notice it and it sticks with me and the brand sticks with me .

Even , and as a great example , the Jonas brothers would never be a band that I would normally be super excited about , but when you find out that Nick Jonas has type 1 diabetes and does a lot of work with it , it does make a different , you know , from totally brands . Yeah , now what are some of the harmful stereotypes surrounding Disabilities ?

If you have 10 minutes , you want to learn about it . Listen to it . She's incredible . But basically she goes on to say like when she was she's , she was a wheelchair user and she would go about her day and people come up to her and be like oh my gosh , you're so inspiring , you inspire me so much .

And her whole thing was like , if I'm not , I don't exist to inspire you , I don't exist to inspire you . And nine times out of ten , literally when you see a disabled person featured in content , it is to inspire the non-disabled viewer , right ? So , just like I mean , respectfully , pornography . That's why she used to term porn .

Porn is used to , like , basically , make the other person feel good , and it doesn't matter really what's going on with the person on the screen , right , okay , they're just . They're just there to objectify and it's there to make you feel good .

Yeah , inspiration porn is the idea that , like disabled people are used for I mean not sexually , hopefully , but like we're not . We don't want to be used to just make you feel good that we have our own experiences , and that's actually really problematic .

Whereas now we're seeing Really cool brands like Nike does a lot of really cool stuff with postpartum bodies and fat bodies and that's amazing and they're seeing really positive results from it , but they don't see them using everyday disabled people in their content . You still see them just using Paralympics and so it's kind of like for non-disabled people .

Think about how Unrealistic beauty standards are right . That's like why there's big movement towards body positivity and exploring what it looks like to have people of all different types of genders in all different types of body sizes Featured in ads .

When we look at disabled representation , when we only see that Inspiration porn trope , what it's saying to society is like , basically , if this disabled person can do it , so can you , right and like One . That's not true . How harmful is like we know it's harmful for to see just size zero blonde . You know 510 women in ads .

We know that that's harmful on society . Same thing goes for disabled people .

If the only to say disability representation you're showing is a Paralympian , that's great that that person could pull themselves up by the bootstraps , but most people can't , so it's actually really harmful , because then it puts this Idea in people's minds that like , oh , all this , that disabled person can do it .

This person can too , when there's actually systemic barriers that prevent us from doing a lot of what other people take for granted .

So what they did was they Change their packaging so that they would be easy to open for people who have mobility struggles like me , and also put Braille on some of their products . Okay , cool , that's a good place to start . Yeah , on top of that , but that also helps us , but it also mostly helps them .

Like they're going to get more money because of it , right , yeah , but what they did that I felt really changed the game was they created a whole like social justice kind of initiative where they focused on educating gyms and gym owners and trainers about how little representation of disabled trainers there was and how little access for access to wellness and fitness

activities disabled people have , and they created guidelines and like a whole campaign surrounding making gyms and fitness facilities accessible .

They also created a landing page where fitness instructors or personal trainers who have certification that are disabled could go and like submit their info so that they could get work and degree help find them some work which is really powerful and cool , so like things like that , where it's not just doing something that like helps you make money immediately , but it

actually supports the community with equity issues , is no notes .

The thing that I feel like they didn't do well on them is they didn't talk about it enough and I feel like if they had partnered with a lot of disabled micro influencers , kind of like mid tier influencers not just the disabled athletes who have big platforms , but like done a big influencer campaign to talk about it , this would have gotten in front of a lot

more people .

Sea Talent was founded by Keely Catwells . They're amazing . They do really cool work . It's like what ? What we don't ? We don't do representation of big influencers with disabilities ? That's not . We focus on narrative and creative , but when they , when our clients want to work with big disabled influencers , they're who we go to immediately every time .

I don't want to bring it up because I don't want to draw engagement , sure , but what do you think of influencers who will share post-duet stitch content from content creators , not brands , content creators who are not disability inclusive or they may accidentally say something about you know , overlook it , or something like that , and they come after them for the purpose

of you know , kind of harshly advocating for something . But what do you think you know to remind people ? You know , what do you think about that ?

I don't know what you're talking about , but I've seen that person go after other things in the past and like the reality is that disabled people I don't know what it was , but let me just lift off some of the big issues that we're dealing with . It is legal in 27 states to pay disabled people less than a minimum wage . It is legal .

Or we have seven times the rates of sexual assault than non-disabled people . We have 11 times higher the rate of suicide than non-disabled people . These are really big issues that are plaguing our community .

So when someone like Cretace and Spice goes after somebody who says something really problematic , it is , I believe , literally like it's an emotional , emotional response and sometimes it's linked to trauma , because we've seen really harmful things and how , whether people want it to or not , what they say and the words they use matter and it informs implicit bias .

Is your audience familiar with the term implicit bias ?

And so the way different things inform our implicit bias is what we see in the media which is why I'm so passionate about it informs our implicit bias . What we are taught in school informs our implicit bias . What we hear our parents say , what we hear people in our churches or religious groups say , those all inform our implicit biases .

So if someone is saying problematic things on social media and they don't like , we also don't know , right . So I have called the brand out before and it's pretty viral and the thing is , oh , tell me about that , okay , if you can . Yeah , I mean , it's a local organization . I live in Minneapolis and there's this .

I mean it's not famous because it's not good , but there's this thing called Minneapolis Fashion Week and I've known the founders of it for years and years . I actually have had the old job of one of them . We know each other very well and they had done something for the past few years . That was pretty problematic , right ?

So they and I I went to them privately and I was like , are you open to changing this ? What they were doing was they were having this fashion show called fashion able and like it was all focusing on , like , the ability and not focusing on the like .

They're like we don't want to focus on the disability , we want to focus on the ability , which is problematic , and disabled people have asked people to stop saying that and I explained , like privately , in person , like hey , I know you don't intend to be harmful with this . I know your intentions are good .

Here's what you're doing , here's what it's reinforcing in society , like that implicit bias . Here are some changes I would make and I would be happy to help do a training for you guys . I would volunteer to do it .

We could educate all of your producers and I made some really tactical suggestions , practical things that they could do , like why is this the only one fashion event that has disabled people and none of your other ones do ? Because that's not inclusion , that's sub-clusion , that's saying you can join but just for this one .

Inclusion would be embedding it in all of your practices . So they didn't , and that's one thing . But then they also went on to have a freak show themed fashion show , and I think a lot of people just think of freak shows as spooky carnivals . But what they were was they were disabled people .

Until the 1970s , there was a series of laws called the ugly laws . The ugly laws were municipal laws that forbade disabled people from being seen in public . The only chance that disabled people were seen in public were at freak shows .

Freak shows were organized systems where non-disabled people could pay money to laugh at point at , gawk at and be horrified by disabled people . So this organization did not do any of like . You know the basic . Okay , how can we be more inclusive ? And they didn't have any disabled people involved in their leadership .

This whole thing was run by non-disabled people , okay hold on one second .

I don't know if I can swear an F and joke Like , yeah , okay , this is fun for you , this is a real struggle for someone else .

I offered to do it for free , didn't even make her pay me and they just chose not to . Then , when it escalated to the point that it became something that was going to reinforce negative implicit biases about disability , I called it out and so and I don't think I was I didn't have one of my business coaches . She calls it my target voice .

I've worked with target before , right , and so , like when we work with them , if there's like negative feedback , I'm very calm and collected , like here's some things we could change . It wasn't my target voice , it was my . I'm angry and this is wrong voice . Yeah , I think it's valid when people respond like that .

When we're dismissed , we're dismissed , so I think it's valid that she has some pretty harsh critique sometimes .

Now where I think it absolutely becomes problematic is you talk to her and she dismisses you , and so it goes forward with it . That's incredibly problematic . Now , thinking about brands for anyone who's listening right now . So we have big brands , but we have also small business , we have independent brands , we have influencers . What could someone do right now ?

So it's July . It is still , I mean , due to my bad my schedule . We're here mid month , but what month is July ?

Because disabled people are talking about it , and so I think the reason pride has become so powerful and successful is big brands have gotten behind it and raised awareness about it , and then there's big parades , like pride started as a protest , just like disability , pride has started as a protest , like it was like no , we're here , we're proud of who we are .

You can't change us , they said the same way . I really think the reason pride has gotten so much momentum is because people listen to that community a lot more and respected a lot more , whereas disability makes people feel extremely uncomfortable still .

It wasn't so focused on disability pride , but they didn't know anything about like disability culture or like how to talk about disability . And so they paid money , they paid a whole production team and everyone on set for at least a whole day and they did this story .

The story was about a worker who worked at their stores who treated an autistic customer with kindness . She always knew their order and was like a good server to them . And the way and the narrative that Chick-fil-A framed this was like wow , isn't this inspiring ? And here's the deal .

Their companies could crank out something like that now if they really wanted to . But what they won't understand is that when you say that treating an autistic customer the same as you would any other customer is inspirational , that makes it , gives society a pass on ableism . So , unless you're doing deep work , I don't suggest doing anything .

I suggest doing the work now . I suggest treating this as you're jumping off point of like oh man , I didn't know that next you're going to do something , or even , like you know , I'm talking about before . National disability employment awareness month is October and then international day of disabled people is in December .

So if you want to start like working towards those things , that's an option . But don't do anything as in terms of like a PR push right now If you're already . So my thing would be to learn , like we have . We offer workshops . We're doing five workshops .

We offer all kinds of options with a misfit , but there's also other people that are doing lots of great work as well . I love our team , but I mostly care that you learn about this . That's mostly what I care about .

You know , as you mentioned the story of Chick-fil-A , and even when you're referring back to Nike and the Paralympians , you know people , I know a lot of people strive to do good . They strive to do the right thing and brands do , and it's , and the rules of the road with disability , with marginalized groups , is brought sometimes with .

It makes it difficult , Because if you do do it wrong , even if you try , there are people out there who will attack you for it , who will bring you down for it .

But also with some groups , for instance , when it comes to race , we , you know for years , people you know either told or you know it was indoctrinated in them , like you don't see color , You're not supposed to see color , and now we know , no , we need to see color , we need to see all of why someone is in a marginalized position .

You're coming at it in another way . It's like , yes , we want to see it because we want to be awareness of it , but when it comes to branding and marketing . It's important to treat people with disabilities just like everyone else Totally yeah yeah , yeah , because of the narrative that's been around us so much .

When they're trying to include people with disabilities , they will show how challenging it is to be a person with a disability without showing the other side . And so then it . I'm not going to lie to you being disabled is hard sometimes , right , like my endometriosis at disability has made my life extremely challenging , however it is .

It's not just about being disabled . However it is , I don't only have a one dimensional life , so when you just show these little snippets , it reinforces stigmas . So one of the best ways you can show disabled people is like showing them just participating in their everyday life .

And going , you know , when you mentioned how difficult it is for you , I think anyone who's ever traveled with me , you know , this weekend , a girls weekend on Martha's Vineyard , you know , oh , I forgot to buy the gluten free bread , oh , I forgot to , you know , and the fact that they're even thinking about it is wonderful , but then you become a nuisance .

Or anyone who has traveled with me or gone to a ball game with me or someplace where they where you know , I can't get access to food and I get very angry Totally . It's so funny it is . So it's all about just general , I just awareness of it , because it does impact more people than we realize .

Okay , so I just wanted briefly , before we wrap up here are there any celebrities that seem to do it well , that are bringing disabilities into a new light ? When , now that they have the influence behind them that you think are really making strides here ?

He's hot as hell , he's really hot and he is deaf and he's super cool and he's doing a series on his social media talking about , like , deaf erasure and all of the systemic issues that deaf people have faced over the years . Let people get a better taste of it . So I think that's an example of somebody who's great and has done really cool things .

I also want to share a story of somebody who messed up and fixed it perfect .

Sorry , enjoy it . Right , it was so quick , I did a podcast on that .

But how many producers and sound artists and marketers were involved with the release of that song ? Right , like it could have , somebody should have been able to step , and Lizzo is a very like . Look at how she responded . She would have responded quickly if they had flagged that for her right . Yeah absolutely so .

The amount of people that that song , the amount of hands that that song went through before it got to Lizzo and before it got to the public was a lot . So that's part of why I say every single person in this industry needs some understanding of this , because with social media you're gonna get called out .

All right , Kelsey , before we go , just tell me some of the things , some of the ways that people can work with you right now .

We know that companies that do prioritize disability see 30% higher profit margins . So we go through like the basics of that and then we also look at four different commercials in that workshop , one of which is that Chick-fil-A1 , and then we compare and contrast good ones versus bad ones and what narrative really does .

The third one is Say what your Guide to Disability Inclusive Language , which gives you a crash course and how to talk about it . Because within every community language's nuance , disability is the largest marginalized community in the world . So of course , there's varying takes .

It is not comprehend like I could not put this in an Instagram post if I tried , because , like you're saying , you post something , someone will get upset . Some people prefer different like somebody . Some people within the disability community prefer person with disability . Others prefer disabled person . Others prefer something completely different .

But , respectfully , if I'm at Target running errands with my husband , I don't want to educate your five year old about my disability , and I think that's like it's a very common experience for disabled people to be pointed at , stared at and have kids come up to us and ask .

So I always say it's your job as the parent to learn about this and expose them to it at a young age . Sesame Street , the proud family , Daniel Tiger they all have really good representation of people with disabilities in there .

So let's answer your questions , you can explain it to them , you can expose them to it and then you won't have that awkward situation , because it's every parent's worst nightmare when their kid points and asks Mom , what's wrong with that person . We're trying to equip you with the language to help you do that . And then our last one is Allyship 101 .

So , as non-disabled people , how can you show up and support us without centering your own experience ?

Instead of looking at them with pity , we have to look at them like they're just like us , but also just to be reminded that they need to be seen when they need to be seen when it helps their lives , but also they're just like the rest of us out there . Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom on this . Yeah , thanks for having me and happy Disability .

Pride Month 2023 .